mobile revolution essay

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The Mobile Revolution: How Mobile Technologies Drive a Trillion-Dollar Impact

January 15, 2015  By  Wolfgang Bock ,  François Candelon ,  Steve Chai ,  Ethan Choi ,  John Corwin ,  Sebastian DiGrande ,  Rishab Gulshan ,  David Michael , and  Antonio Varas

Globally, mobile technology has emerged as a primary engine of economic growth, stimulating enormous private-sector spending in both R&D and infrastructure, and profoundly changing daily lives—everywhere.

Dramatic performance improvements in mobile communications standards have propelled mobile to become the fastest adopted technology of all time.

• User costs have plummeted. The average mobile subscriber cost per megabyte decreased 99 percent between 2005 and 2013. Smartphones are now available for as little as $40.
• Mobile network infrastructure costs have also fallen dramatically, while performance has soared—a 95 percent cost reduction (per megabyte transmitted) from second generation (2G) networks to third generation (3G) networks, and a further 67 percent drop from 3G to fourth generation (4G) networks.
• Mobile data-transmission speeds have skyrocketed: 4G networks offer 12,000 times faster data-transmission speeds than 2G networks.
• Consumer adoption of 3G and 4G standards has outpaced that of all other technologies, growing to nearly 3 billion connections in less than 15 years, and projected to exceed 8 billion connections by 2020.
• Effective industry-driven collaborations to solve technical problems, set standards, and license intellectual property have been key enablers in this revolution.

Mobile is connecting and empowering consumers—everywhere.

• Consumers derive enormous value from mobile. Our research across six countries—the U.S., Germany, South Korea, Brazil, China, and India—reveals that the value consumers place on mobile technologies ranges from $700 to $6,000 per user. The data show an aggregate annual consumer value for mobile technologies of $6.4 trillion across the six countries, above the cost of the devices and services.
• This aggregate consumer surplus from mobile technologies exceeds the GDP of every country in the world except for the U.S. and China.
• Mobile is especially valuable to emerging market consumers. In China and India, the consumer-reported value of mobile exceeds 40 percent of average income.
• The market demand for continued innovation and investment is clear: 90 percent of 3G and 4G consumers report they want even faster data speeds, more coverage, more battery life, and many other improvements. With global data usage doubling every year, if this trend continues, data traffic will be 1,000 times greater within a decade. New technologies will be required to accommodate this expanding demand.
• Consumers expect that mobile will continue to improve and transform their lives, delivering a broader range of services that will connect them with everything, everywhere.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that adopt advanced mobile technologies are the fastest growing.

• SMEs that are  mobile leaders  are winning. Typically, the 25 percent of SMEs that use mobile services more intensively see their revenues growing up to two times faster and add jobs up to eight times faster than their peers.
• The  mobile laggards  among SMEs have revenue growth and job creation that substantially lag behind the leaders. With fewer plans to invest in mobile, these SMEs are at risk of being left further behind.
• SME mobile leaders in emerging markets are leapfrogging older generations of technology still widely used in developed markets. The share of mobile leaders in Brazil, China, and India exceeds that in the developed countries examined.
• Greater mobile adoption by SMEs can create jobs. If more SMEs expand their businesses at the rate of the mobile leaders, 7 million more jobs could be added in the six countries evaluated.

Mobile technologies are fueling economic growth, driving recovery from the global recession.

• The mobile value chain generated almost $3.3 trillion in revenue globally in 2014 and is directly responsible for 11 million jobs.
• Mobile is an engine of economic prosperity. In the six countries evaluated, mobile contributes more than $1.2 trillion in GDP. This equates to between 2 and 4 percent of each country’s GDP, and 11 percent in the case of South Korea.
• The rapid growth of mobile is poised to continue. Across the countries evaluated, mobile’s share of GDP is growing at a 10 to 20 percent annual rate and can continue or even accelerate as consumers and businesses continually discover new applications for ever more advanced mobile technologies.

The mobile industry has made massive investment in new infrastructure and R&D.

• Companies in the mobile value chain invested $1.8 trillion in infrastructure and R&D from 2009 through 2013, relying almost exclusively on private-sector funding.
• Core technology (2G, 3G, and 4G) innovators take enormous risks by spending heavily on research and development with no guarantee of return on investment. Companies focused on mobile’s core technologies invest a larger share of revenue (21 percent) in R&D than those in any other industry except biotechnology—and more than companies in all other R&D-heavy industries, such as pharmaceuticals (14 percent).
• Licensing of core technologies within the mobile industry is essential to its rapid and cost-effective advancement. Clear and cooperative licensing arrangements make it possible for companies across the value chain—and thus consumers and businesses—to access the most advanced technologies.
• Many new and start-up companies are entering the mobile sector. In the past five years, venture capital (VC) investments in mobile have doubled as a percentage of total VC investments, reaching almost 8 percent ($37 billion) in 2014.

To ensure that the mobile revolution continues and expands, policymakers must support an environment that fosters innovation and investment. Future growth of mobile depends on continuing the policies that enabled the industry to get where it is today.

• Strong patent protection is needed to encourage large and risky investments in mobile technology innovation.
• Market-driven licensing is vital in order to ensure that technology innovations can be widely shared with others in the industry.
• Industry standards are required to solve the industry’s most complex technology problems through open and meritocratic processes.
• Continuous allocation and availability of additional radio spectrum, especially more licensed spectrum, is needed to keep pace with consumer demand.
• To reap the economic benefit of fifth generation (5G) networks and beyond, mobile players will need to invest approximately $4 trillion in R&D and capital expenditures by 2020.
• Weakening patent protection, intervening in the industry-driven standards-setting process, or curtailing technology licensing will jeopardize the future of mobile.

The Mobile Technology Revolution

Mobile technologies have transformed the way we live, work, learn, travel, shop, and stay connected. Not even the industrial revolution created such a swift and radical explosion in technological innovation and economic growth worldwide. Nearly all fundamental human pursuits have been touched, if not revolutionized, by mobile. In less than 15 years, 3G and 4G technologies have reached 3 billion subscriptions, according to Ericsson, making mobile the most rapidly adopted consumer technology in history.

Just as the rise of the Internet in the late 1990s was marked by explosive growth and aggressive innovation, the shift toward mobile is reshaping the economic landscape once again. Mobile is not just an industry in and of itself. It is also the foundation upon which an impressive array of industries—new and old—have taken root and flourished.

ABOUT THIS REPORT

Mobile communications are the most rapidly adopted consumer technology in history. Globally, mobile technology has emerged as a primary engine of economic growth, stimulating enormous private-sector spending in both R&D and infrastructure, and profoundly changing daily lives—everywhere.

To assess the global economic impact and implications of mobile technologies, Qualcomm commissioned The Boston Consulting Group to conduct an independent study. The work included extensive research in six countries and consultation with numerous independent experts. BCG is wholly responsible for all analysis and conclusions included in the report.

By mobile, we refer to all technologies that enable voice and data services via cellular connectivity, including second generation (2G), third generation (3G), and fourth generation (4G) networks. With each leap forward in the core technologies, new digital services come online with the potential to transform fields that have massive social and economic impact, such as health care, finance, and education. Indeed, for consumers, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and the economy as a whole, mobile is a global success story. Revenues across the mobile industry have grown at 13 percent year on year since 2009—more than twice the rate of the global economy over the same period.

Recent advances in core mobile communications technologies have driven tangible improvements in user experience and access costs, leading to rapid adoption of devices. Consumers and businesses are discovering new ways to use mobile at an astounding rate, and mobile devices have a stickiness unlike any other consumer commodity (save the necessities of food and clothing). Users cite the profound impact that mobile has had on commerce, health, and public safety, as well as communication with friends, coworkers, and other social circles. The idea of leaving the house or traveling for business without a mobile phone is unthinkable for an ever-increasing number of users.

Mobile technologies are also fast becoming a growth engine for SMEs. Mobile is sparking entrepreneurship in both the developed and emerging world. It has also enabled myriad innovative business models that have helped SMEs compete on an even footing with much bigger companies. (See Exhibit 1.)

The Mobile Value Chain

The transformative effect of mobile has been made possible by an enormous investment from a myriad of players within the digital space: innovators for the core communications technologies, component designers and manufacturers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), infrastructure suppliers, mobile network operators, content providers, mobile app developers, and device retailers. The mobile value chain spans continents, binding together key players in a manner that is at once deeply collaborative and fiercely competitive. And the value chain for mobile technologies is only becoming more international as countries such as China, India, and Brazil begin to take broader roles in technology innovation, device manufacturing, and application development.

Each generation of mobile technologies takes years of fundamental research to develop in international standards-setting bodies, with the complexity of requirements increasing monumentally for each new generation. (See “Moving the Industry from 2G to 3G to 4G.”) These enormous investments have been fueled by policies and frameworks that incentivize innovation—including strong patent protection, licensing models that provide wide access to core technologies, and industry-driven standards. The development of technology standards, in particular, has driven the mobile industry forward. Companies across the mobile value chain need a solid foundation upon which they can implement new or upgraded products and solutions, whether they are designing compatible components, rolling out expensive infrastructure, or developing new content, apps, or services. By defining an industry standard and making it widely available through licensing, mobile players can develop infrastructure, products, and services with confidence that the core technologies are stable and universally accessible. This reduces risks associated with capital investments, so mobile companies can scale up faster, which in turn boosts consumer adoption and usage.

MOVING THE INDUSTRY FROM 2G TO 3G TO 4G

Consider the innovation required to move the industry from 2G to 3G to 4G.

Most 2G phones support only one core technology (for example, GSM or CDMA) and can only be used for voice and text messaging. The Internet connectivity is barely fast enough for casual users and insufficient as the primary Internet portal for professionals.

The arrival of 3G phones increased speeds dramatically and frequently supported multiple core technologies (such as WCDMA or CDMA2000) in order to enable global roaming. These next-generation devices incorporated location-based services through GPS, were compatible with Wi-Fi networks and Bluetooth, enabled picture sharing, and supported low-definition streaming video (albeit slowly at first).

Yet another major leap occurred from 3G to 4G technologies. 4G has enabled dramatic improvements in capacity and cost. With 4G technologies, it is common to watch full-length, high-definition videos via mobile, take video conference calls, make mobile payments via near-field communication (NFC), control devices in cars and homes via mobile, and switch seamlessly from 4G to Wi-Fi networks without interruption. These functions rely on completely new technologies that were not a part of the previous generation of mobile phones, and required more costly R&D investments than the preceding technologies.

The standardized core technologies have delivered major advances in capacity, while network and device costs have fallen sharply. (See Exhibit 2.)

• 4G technologies have enabled a 12,000-time improvement in capacity relative to 2G, with maximum download speeds of 250 megabits per second (Mbps), as opposed to 20 kilobits per second (Kbps) for 2G.
• The cost of network infrastructure per megabyte fell 95 percent from 2G to 3G, and 67 percent from 3G to 4G.
• The global average cost of mobile subscriptions relative to maximum data speed has decreased 99 percent or about 40 percent annually between 2005 and 2013.

Smartphones have become much more affordable. Approximately 30 percent of all units sold cost less than $100, and some sell for as little as $40, according to International Data Corporation (IDC). These falling prices have encouraged usage to shift from a limited pool of luxury consumers to billions of mainstream users. This robust growth in bandwidth, combined with falling costs, has spurred extensive follow-on innovations, resulting in the tremendous variety of new entrants and applications that exist today.

Looking Ahead to 5G and Beyond

As we look ahead to fifth generation (5G) networks and beyond—which promise to deliver more bandwidth and higher data rates, support the Internet of Things, and dramatically increase the numbers of connected devices—we anticipate a reinvention of communication, content, and services on a global scale.

While the mobile value chain is healthy and robust, the things that make it thrive must be nurtured. Many policies currently in place actively sustain the innovation and interoperability needed to stitch together the platforms and networks that make up the global telecommunications industry . As mobile continues to expand its reach, policymakers must continue to support an environment of innovation across the entire value chain.

The Global Economic Impact of Mobile Technologies

Mobile technologies are a critical driver of the world economy, generating global revenue of almost $3.3 trillion. (See Exhibit 3.) The mobile revolution has accelerated innovation worldwide, boosting global GDP and creating new jobs across a vast array of industries.

• Mobile is directly responsible for 11 million jobs worldwide, and the indirect impact far exceeds this number.
• More than two-thirds of mobile industry jobs are high-value, knowledge-economy jobs, such as innovation research, component and device design, and app development.

In the midst of the global economic downturn, mobile has been a beacon.

The mobile value chain extends across continents, bringing with it a boost to national economies around the world. A smartphone sold in Germany by a South Korean vendor, for example, involves coordination among many economies. The technology inside this smartphone is likely developed among the U.S., several European Union (EU) countries, South Korea, and China. Components are likely produced in some combination of the U.S., South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, and assembled in China. Likewise, the network infrastructure—such as base stations, which are critical to the operation of this smartphone—was likely produced in Asia and uses patented technology largely developed in the U.S. and Europe.

The mobile revolution has generated enormous investments in R&D and infrastructure worldwide.

• Companies in the mobile industry invested $1.8 trillion in capital expenditures (capex) and R&D from 2009 through 2013.
• Over the past five years, total investment in mobile technologies has exceeded investment in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology combined.
• Mobile communications infrastructure is one of the only infrastructures that relies almost solely on private investment (unlike, for example, bridges, roads, airports, water, and sewage).

In the six countries we analyzed—the U.S., Germany, South Korea, Brazil, China, and India—combined mobile GDP (mGDP) contributes more than $1.2 trillion to overall GDP. (See Exhibit 4.) These six countries account for 47 percent of global GDP. To isolate the growth of mGDP from overall GDP, we used an expenditure-based approach that assesses consumption (consumers purchasing mobile devices and services and engaging in mobile commerce), investments in mobile technologies, government spending, and net exports of mobile technologies (a country’s contribution to the worldwide mobile economy).

South Korea, the U.S., and China are among those nations with the largest mobile contributions to GDP. Net exports (the difference in value between exports and imports for a given country) have had a dramatic impact on mGDP in certain countries. For nations with high production relative to domestic consumption, such as South Korea, exports are a major, if not the main, driver of mGDP. Countries with the strongest mGDP also tend to have unique capabilities within the highest-value portions of the mobile industry—intellectual property (IP) innovators, device manufacturers, and component designers—enabling high net exports. South Korea’s high mGDP, for example, is due to its major role in producing and exporting essential mobile products and components.

In the six countries surveyed, mobile typically accounts for 2 to 4 percent of each country’s GDP, with a compound annual growth rate of 10 to 20 percent. In the U.S., the 3.2 percent of GDP related to mobile exceeds the GDP of such essential industries as entertainment, transportation, automobile, hospitality, and agriculture.

A strong area of growth in mobile technologies will come from app developers, who are pioneering new ways to use the cheap and abundant bandwidth provided by the most advanced mobile standards. Important advances in mobile connectivity, geopositioning, and multimedia technologies have inspired new apps that transform the way we communicate (Twitter, WhatsApp), travel (Google Maps, Uber), make purchases (Yelp, Square), discover new music (Shazam, Spotify), and share memories (Instagram, Snapchat)—wherever we are. For apps to continue this growth, more innovation in core communications technologies is needed, as each major technological advance enables new waves of capabilities. According to Kevin Systrom, CEO and cofounder of Instagram, “The one thing that would keep us back is the ability to get data to the phone quickly and reliably. It needs to be fast and seamless—consumed instantly.”

Three Economies Driven by Mobile

Countries reaping the greatest rewards from the mobile economy—for example, South Korea, the U.S., and China—have all followed their own unique paths to success.

South Korea. South Korea has quickly become the world’s most advanced mobile economy, having embraced 3G and 4G since their onset. Mobile represents 11 percent of the country’s GDP, valued at $143 billion. South Korea is a leading actor across all phases of the mobile value chain, particularly in its high-value segments such as design and production of devices and components. A strong focus on R&D and bold investments in nascent technologies, such as semiconductors in the 1980s and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) two decades later, helped South Korean players take the lead in design and manufacturing operations. Two of the leading smartphone OEMs—LG and Samsung—are based in South Korea. These companies have managed to transition from low-cost products to premium, cutting-edge products, contributing exceptionally high value and building a strong global brand. By participating at such a fundamental level in the value chain, South Korea has become a highly successful net exporter, with exports of devices and components significantly exceeding imports in overall value.

The U.S. The U.S. is a major contributor to core segments of the mobile value chain, with companies like Qualcomm innovating in core communications technologies, Apple leading in OEM, Google with the most widely used smartphone operating system (Android), and Facebook as one of the most popular global apps. As a strong player in mobile innovation, the U.S. gained a leadership position in 4G technology. U.S. app developers have generated an array of new businesses. The U.S. has the largest absolute mGDP of all countries studied. Mobile’s contribution to U.S. GDP is currently 3.2 percent ($548 billion) and expected to reach nearly 5 percent by 2020.

China. In emerging markets, China has led the way in embracing mobile. (See the sidebar “Alipay Leads the Way.”) With China’s wide deployment of affordably priced 2G and 3G services, Chinese consumers have benefited greatly from mobile technologies. In 2012, China became the world’s largest smartphone market.

ALIPAY LEADS THE WAY

E-commerce and (more recently) m-commerce have taken off in China. With $295 billion in e-commerce revenues in 2013 (up from $74 billion in 2010), China has surpassed the U.S. to become the world leader in e-commerce. By 2015, mobile commerce in China is projected to reach $41.4 billion, accounting for 8 percent of all its e-commerce, according to KPMG.

The explosion in Chinese m-commerce is due in large part to Alipay, a mobile payment system that enables consumers to make payments anytime, anywhere. With 190 million active users in 2014, up from 100 million in 2013, Alipay has become China’s number one mobile payment tool, according to The Wall Street Journal .

Alipay currently dominates consumer e-commerce in China and is becoming a major force in the Chinese economy. With 300 million account holders, Alipay is believed to have processed more than $500 billion in digital payments last year, helping Alibaba capture 80 percent of all online transactions in the country.

Many of these transactions are managed through a single mobile app: Alipay Wallet. With this smartphone app, users take control of many activities traditionally handled by banks, such as opening an interest-bearing money market fund account, adding or withdrawing funds from the Alipay account, paying bills, and transferring money. It also allows users to make offline purchases from vending machines and brick-and-mortar stores.

By building trust among users through the escrow payment model (the funds will not be released to the seller until the buyer has received the products and is satisfied with them), facilitating quick and easy payments while on the go, and virtually eliminating the need to carry cash, Alipay and Alipay Wallet have helped ignite e-commerce and m-commerce across China. In the words of one Alipay customer, “80 percent of all my online transactions are done through Alipay.”

Mobile represents 3.7 percent of China’s GDP, with a 17.7 percent compound annual growth rate from 2009 through 2014. China has become a highly competitive place into which to import and assemble components into finished products, allowing the country to tap into its strong manufacturing base. China has been gaining market share in higher value areas, with the success of companies in the device space (such as Lenovo and Xiaomi) as well as telecom equipment manufacturers (such as Huawei and ZTE). Lenovo’s recent acquisition of Motorola has further strengthened China’s capabilities in mobile innovation. Also, China is now home to more inventors in mobile technologies than any country other than the U.S. and South Korea. China is also seeing the rise of a vibrant app community, with approximately 1 million people working in this high-growth field—more than twice as many as in the U.S.

The Ripple Effect

Mobile has been a driving force in the success of some of the world’s most valuable companies: 6 of the 25 most valuable companies in the world are participants in the mobile value chain—Apple, Google, China Mobile, Alibaba, Facebook, and Verizon. In the smartphone era, these six companies have grown their revenue, on average, 35 percent annually. Facebook alone grew 78 percent year-over-year between 2009 and 2013, with mobile currently representing 88 percent of its user base (of which 60 percent are mobile-only users) and accounting for approximately 66 percent of its revenue. All are major players in the mobile economy and have benefited tremendously from advances in the core technologies that enable mobile communications. Mobile is also driving intense innovation in the start-up community as well—7.9 percent ($37 billion) of all venture capital (VC) funding in 2014 was invested in mobile start-ups, up from 3.8 percent in 2010. (See Exhibit 5.) Mobile’s share of VC investments is more than double its share of GDP, indicating the critical role that innovation plays in mobile and highlighting the industry’s prospects for growth.

As this global snapshot demonstrates, the mobile value chain has generated enormous economic and social benefits for both developed and emerging markets. Mobile commerce creates a ripple effect that spreads throughout the global economy.

Case Study: Flipkart Sidesteps the Desktop

For the majority of Internet users in India, mobile devices are their primary portal to the online experience. Only about 5 percent of users in India own personal computers. (By comparison, PC penetration in the United States and Japan has reached 90 percent or more.) According to Unitus Seed Fund, 34 percent of people in India access the Internet exclusively through mobile phones. Mobile penetration in India is expected to reach 953 million subscriptions by 2015, up from 507 million in 2009. In light of the strong disparity between PC and mobile usage in India, some companies have crafted their business models to capitalize on the mobile revolution.

Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce marketplace, caters to the huge numbers of people in India’s towns and cities who rely on mobile devices for commerce. Consumers can use the Flipkart app to search, share, compare prices, and shop from thousands of third-party vendors in more than 70 categories (including clothing, appliances, and power tools)—generating major purchasing power for customers previously unable to access the Internet.

More than 10 million people in India have installed the Flipkart app. Mobile traffic growth for the app is twice that of PC-driven traffic growth, and over 50 percent of the company’s traffic comes through the mobile app and the mobile website. Flipkart anticipates that mobile commerce through the app will constitute more than 75 to 80 percent of all user traffic in India by 2016.

Growth Engine for SMEs

Because SMEs are the principal growth drivers of so many economies around the world, the research for this report included a comprehensive study of the relationship between SMEs’ adoption of mobile technology and their performance. We surveyed approximately 3,500 SME decision makers in the U.S., Germany, South Korea, Brazil, China, and India—six of the world’s largest and most diverse economies—and took an inventory of their companies’ mobile adoption levels. We focused on mobile technologies used for marketing and sales (such as mobile apps) and those used for operations (such as mobile data collection or fleet management). (See our detailed survey methodology in the appendix .)

In many economies, SMEs are responsible for up to 65 percent of all jobs, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Due to the importance that SMEs have in the economy, we examined the practices that set SME mobile leaders apart, and we assessed the sizable potential opportunity for national economies through increased SME adoption of mobile technologies.

In both developed and emerging markets, we found that mobile has been widely adopted by SMEs. Of the small businesses we surveyed, 90 percent report that their top managers use mobile devices regularly. And 50 to 70 percent of these companies pay for the cost of mobile devices and/or service costs for their employees. But while SMEs report high levels of adoption, they vary widely in their level of engagement. Whether in emerging or developed markets, SMEs that have embraced advanced, data-driven mobile capabilities have fared better than their peers.

Leaders and Laggards

For a subset of SMEs that we call mobile leaders, mobile has proven to be an enormous boon. These companies stay ahead of mainstream mobile adoption, riding each new advance to improve productivity and efficiency in operations, connect with new customers and markets, and compete with much larger players. Mobile leaders employ the full range of available tools, such as basic productivity tools (voice, text, and email), operational tools (real-time job tracking or mobile data analytics), and sales and marketing tools (mobile-friendly website or company apps). These mobile capabilities allow them to be more innovative and, in some cases, fundamentally transform the way they operate.

At the other end of the spectrum there are mobile laggards. Mobile laggards generally have low levels of technology adoption and limited mobile presence. Laggard SMEs have not yet integrated well-established tools into their business models, much less explored the benefits of more sophisticated technologies, such as a mobile app or mobile data-capturing tools.

According to our research, approximately one-third of SMEs fall into the category of mobile leaders, and these leaders are demonstrating exceptional performance relative to both followers and laggards. (See Exhibit 6.) (More precise definitions of these terms are provided in the appendix .)

• Mobile technologies level the playing field, often allowing mobile leaders to grow faster than the economy as a whole.
• Mobile leaders have grown revenue up to two times faster than laggards and have added jobs up to eight times faster over the past three years.

Mobile leaders report much greater benefits than laggards in terms of increased revenue, efficiency gains, and innovation. This is due, in part, to the fact that mobile leaders can reach more customers and engage with them through additional channels, increasing opportunities for marketing and sales. Leaders also use devices to increase productivity, through on-the-go mobile data capture, dashboards that share real-time information, enterprise apps, and other applications that smooth operations. (See Exhibit 7.)

SMEs in emerging markets have benefited enormously from mobile and have a higher percentage of leaders overall than their counterparts in developed markets.

• In Brazil, China, and India, 25 to 30 percent of SMEs surveyed are mobile leaders, as opposed to only 14 percent in Germany.
• Approximately 75 percent of emerging market SMEs surveyed report that mobile has helped them grow revenue, become more efficient, and be more innovative (compared with only 50 percent of SMEs in developed markets).

Many factors contribute to the higher number of mobile leaders in emerging markets than in developed markets. For many consumers in emerging countries, mobile is their only portal to the Internet, making it more crucial for SMEs to create a strong mobile presence. Likewise, mobile is truly transformational—allowing emerging market SMEs to leapfrog an entire generation of technology and directly develop business models or operational tools for mobile platforms. Without complex legacy systems requiring integration with mobile technologies, these SMEs have an easier path to embracing mobile. Finally, mobile has served as a great leveler for SMEs, allowing smaller players to compete on an even footing with larger enterprises. Apps developed by solo entrepreneurs or small businesses can stand toe-to-toe with apps created by technology giants like Apple and Google.

Benefits of Narrowing the SME “Mobile Divide”

The “mobile divide” between leaders and laggards—that is, the difference in growth associated with a disparity in mobile adoption—is poised to increase going forward. According to our research, approximately 60 percent of mobile leaders report that investing in mobile is a top priority compared with only 15 percent of mobile laggards. Most SMEs report that having a mobile presence is quickly becoming a must-have to attract customers, but a significant portion of small businesses are falling behind.

Narrowing the divide could be especially important in countries like South Korea, where SMEs have struggled to compete against large conglomerates in recent years. Because access to mobile technologies is a powerful enabler of economic and social development, it is essential that the divide between mobile leaders and laggards be narrowed.

In the six countries evaluated, closing the mobile divide among SMEs could add 7 million jobs over the next three years—more than the total number of mobile value chain jobs in these countries. It could also increase GDP growth by 0.5 percentage points and help reduce unemployment by more than 10 percent. (See Exhibit 8.) In countries like Germany or the U.S., where high unemployment has been a problem over the past five years, closing the mobile divide could help reduce unemployment by as much as 15 to 30 percent.

Given the importance and size of the SME sector, governments that fail to encourage growth among SMEs today will face job stagnation tomorrow. Governments must foster the right conditions in order to fuel the growth of the next billion-dollar enterprises. (See Lessons on Technology and Growth from Small-Business Leaders , BCG report, October 2013.) For these reasons, there is a need for strong policies aimed at tackling the mobile divide head on.

Case Studies: SMEs Seize the Mobile Advantage

To better understand how mobile technologies spur economic growth for SMEs, it is useful to examine how mobile has changed the way small businesses and solo entrepreneurs do business. Below we provide three examples that show how small businesses are using mobile technologies to attract new customers, earn more revenue, and fetch the best prices for their goods.

Crowdsourced Reviews: Leveling the Playing Field for Small Business. Small businesses are constantly looking for ways to set themselves apart from larger competitors. Crowdsourced referral apps like Yelp in many countries, or Siksin Hotplace in South Korea, give small businesses the chance to stand out among their peers (even if their peers have much deeper pockets) and gain customer trust.

In the U.S., 30 percent of businesses report that a large portion of their customers come from referral apps like Yelp. According to a BCG survey of nearly 4,800 small businesses, companies that had a Yelp profile but did not advertise on the site nevertheless reported generating incremental revenues of $8,000 annually from Yelp—a kind of passive halo effect. The return is even more powerful for small businesses that actively shaped their digital presence through advertising campaigns on Yelp. The survey found that those companies achieved an average uplift in annual revenue of more than $23,000. (See “ Unlocking the Digital-Marketing Potential of Small Businesses ,” BCG article, March 2013.) According to Matt Halprin, vice president of business operations and strategy at Yelp, “Around 50 percent of all our searches now come from mobile devices, highlighting the importance of mobile for us.”

Referral apps can be effective for a wide range of small businesses. One dentist we interviewed reported that in a single month more than 1,000 people visited his practice’s Yelp page. A restaurant owner in South Korea uses Siksin Hotplace to optimize his inventory, saying: “There is no turnaround time. If I realize I have too many ingredients for a day, I can offer online coupons for the night in a few minutes. And customers love to use the coupons, not only because these are good deals, but also because they know the food will be great from many reviews from nearby customers.” The transparency and immediacy of feedback, coupled with the ability to refine marketing and promotional techniques to reach nearby customers, make these mobile apps a powerful tool for SMEs.

Mobile Payments: Moving Toward a Cashless Society. Mobile payments have unlocked enormous benefits for microbusinesses, small merchants, and solo entrepreneurs, by enabling easy point-of-service sales. Global mobile payments are expected to reach $630 billion worldwide in 2014, up from $170 billion in 2010, according to Juniper Research. Easy-to-use, low-cost mobile payment solutions (such as Square) allow small businesses to make sales anytime, anywhere. In emerging markets, with high mobile penetration but low penetration of bank accounts, online payment solutions enable many new opportunities for small businesses.

For a taxi driver interviewed in Brazil, mobile payments have not just saved him money, they have increased his sense of security. He uses Cielo, a mobile payment solution, to handle transactions with customers. Before mobile payments, he conducted business with cash only. When he lacked correct change for customers, he sometimes lost revenue. Worse, when he had large sums of cash in his cab, he often felt vulnerable to thieves. He now carries a minimal amount of cash in order to conduct business, which facilitates easy transactions with customers and enhances his sense of well-being on the job.

mFarming: Bringing Mobile into the Field. Mobile technologies are enabling farmers to manage their business better. In India, for example, farmers are often located too far from an urban area for fixed line connectivity, limiting access to information about pests or diseases, soil conditions, or current market prices. mKrishi, a mobile app, enables farmers to receive proactive, personalized crop advice as well as periodic, weather-specific alerts on how to protect against pests or when to harvest. Farmers using the tool have increased their productivity by 15 percent, according to mKrishi. One farmer we interviewed reported that use of mKrishi doubled his tomato yield from 800 crates per acre to about 1,600 crates per acre. Another said, “mKrishi has reduced my costs by about 50 percent.” Noted economist Jeffrey Sachs called mobile the greatest tool for poverty alleviation ever invented. As the world’s population grows, mobile farming technologies will become essential.

Connecting and Empowering Consumers

The biggest winners in mobile are consumers. The global adoption rate of mobile devices has been spectacular, driven by steady technology improvements and lower costs. Mobile devices provide ubiquitous connectivity and an array of applications and services that impact almost every facet of life. Further, in emerging economies, mobile is often the first point of access to the Internet, and therefore opens up a huge range of activities that were previously inaccessible.

Today, nearly half the world’s population subscribes to a mobile service, according to GSMA. While approximately 60 percent of users still have basic 2G connections, by 2020, there will be approximately 2.3 billion 4G connections (25 percent of all mobile connections at that time), dramatically increasing the range of services and value provided to consumers around the world.

To better understand how much value consumers derive from mobile technologies and how they use these technologies, we surveyed approximately 7,500 consumers in the U.S., Germany, South Korea, Brazil, China, and India as part of the research for this report. We used a sophisticated approach to ascertaining the true value that mobile creates independent of what consumers currently pay for devices and connectivity. (See our detailed survey methodology in the appendix .)

Our research shows that mobile technologies are creating immense value for consumers—value that greatly exceeds the cost of owning a mobile device. Consumers worldwide value mobile technologies at 11 to 45 percent of their income—well above what they pay for the service. (See Exhibit 9.)

The Value Consumers Place on Mobile Technologies

The ways that consumers use mobile technologies vary considerably in developed versus emerging economies. In developed markets, the ubiquitous connectivity makes users’ lives easier through services such as mobile banking, GPS-based mapping, and crowdsourced recommendation apps. With breakthroughs in capacity and data rates, a booming ecosystem of mobile apps has emerged to save consumers time and money while they are on the move. (See Exhibit 10.) Consumers in developed markets value mobile technologies at upward of $6,000 per year, or approximately 12 percent of their income.

In emerging markets, the numbers tell an even more powerful story. Chinese consumers for example, value mobile at approximately 45 percent of their income. For many consumers in emerging markets, mobile phones are their only “connected” device. It provides the chance to live healthier lives, access educational resources, earn a higher income, and create better living conditions. In China, more than half of consumers reported that mobile technologies make them more productive at work and allow them to pursue entrepreneurial activities.

Mobile technologies have become a basic necessity for many consumers. This can be seen in the trade-offs consumers would accept to keep their mobile phones. The majority of people surveyed were willing to give up luxuries (such as dining out or going on vacation) for a year in order to keep their mobile phone. In China and South Korea, a majority of users would give up a subscription to home broadband Internet rather than go without a mobile phone. (See Exhibit 11.)

The benefit consumers receive from mobile technologies can be more fully quantified using an economic concept called consumer surplus —that is, the value that consumers themselves receive, over and above what they pay for devices, apps, services, and Internet access. In the six countries evaluated, mobile technologies have created $6.4 trillion of annual consumer surplus, with approximately 65 percent of that value stemming from 3G and 4G capabilities. (See Exhibit 12.)

• This consumer surplus of $6.4 trillion far exceeds industry revenues across the entire mobile value chain and is greater than the GDP of every country in the world, with the exception of the U.S. and China.
• If 4G services were rolled out to all existing mobile consumers in the six countries analyzed, we estimate an additional $1.4 trillion in consumer surplus, bringing the surplus to $7.8 trillion.

Case Studies: Mobile Changes Lives in Emerging Markets

The following two brief case studies show the benefits that mobile devices deliver across the globe, by empowering women to fight back against violence and improving overall health and well-being.

Fighting Back Against Violence. In India, an app called FightBack allows women to send out a security alert to friends, relatives, and emergency services when they feel threatened or endangered. With the push of a panic button on the smartphone app, an SOS alert is triggered and sent out to a predefined list of six emergency contacts. This instant alert continuously pinpoints the user’s exact location through GPS tracking.

Beyond its immediate benefit of helping to protect women who are exposed to violence, the app also has far-reaching effects within the broader community. For example, it provides an interactive map of all locations in which alerts have been issued. This information has helped police officers to identify “hot spots” where women feel threatened on the streets, and that information has been used to improve safety in these areas.

Treating Disease and Saving Lives. In emerging economies, mobile health (mHealth)—the use of mobile applications and devices to deliver medical information, access data, or provide clinical services—offers basic health-care services to patients that might otherwise go untreated. According to TechChange, access to mobile technologies is growing much more quickly than access to traditional health care services. People in emerging countries account for 80 percent of worldwide mobile subscriptions, but they have an average doctor-to-patient ratio of 1:250,000; in light of this situation, mHealth represents a new effective way to bring health care to more people.

Swasthya Samvedana Sena, an initiative in India, uses mobile technologies to improve maternal health. Frontline health-care workers in multiple regions across India use mobile tablets to educate pregnant women and new mothers on a wide range of topics, including women’s health, pregnancy, labor, contraception, government services, postnatal care, and HIV. According to one beneficiary, “Visits by the doctors have now decreased thanks to the education provided by this service.”

More Innovation Is Needed

Despite the tremendous impact that mobile has already delivered—or perhaps because of its tremendous impact—businesses and consumers still want more. We found that 90 percent of the 3G and 4G consumers who participated in our survey are eager for advances above and beyond the currently available mobile technology.

Fundamental innovation is required to boost speed, extend battery life, and strengthen connectivity. More network rollouts are needed to deliver better service to more consumers at lower cost. The next generation of technologies cannot get here fast enough for those who are accustomed to always-on, instant access to everything.

Core technology improvements and more reliable connections have led users to engage in increasingly data-intensive activities on their mobile devices. This, in turn, places additional strain on capacity. Between 2013 and 2018, global mobile data traffic is expected to increase elevenfold, reaching 15.9 exabytes per month by 2018, according to Cisco. That is three times faster than fixed Internet protocol traffic. Mobile data speed is also expected to increase dramatically.

Many of these breakthroughs will require continuing up-front investments in R&D by the industry. Our analysis has identified several key enablers that have fostered innovation and investment in the mobile industry, including strong patent protection (in order to incentivize risky, up-front investment in innovation), industry-driven standards (in order to solve complex industry challenges), and the allocation of additional spectrum (in order to keep pace with consumer demand and support the ever-increasing array of new mobile devices, applications, and services).

The Enablers of Mobile Innovation

Mobile has grown faster than any other industry in history, but it is still in its early days. New applications and services are spreading rapidly, drawing consumers deeper into the mobile economy each year. 5G is coming, bringing with it a variety of new mobile capabilities. Some have already begun, such as the Internet of Things—machines or devices that communicate directly with other machines or devices. By connecting billions of devices and trillions of sensors, the Internet of Things has the potential to revolutionize consumers’ interactions with nearly every industry. (See the sidebar “Getting Smarter: The Internet of Things.”) Other capabilities have yet to be dreamed up by the innovators of the world.

GETTING SMARTER : THE INTERNET OF THINGS

The smartphone industry has already revolutionized the global economy, but this phenomenon represents just the beginning. By 2020, the Internet of Things is expected to rival the smartphone industry with revenues in the trillions.

The Internet of Things is changing the relationships between consumers and the myriad objects all around them. Equipped with sensors, objects can interact autonomously with their environment or be controlled remotely by the user. Cars can communicate with other vehicles, elevators can monitor their own safety, packages can be tracked as they move from one location to the next, home appliances can be turned on or off remotely. These new features are helping people be safer, save money, conserve resources, and simplify their lives.

The number of connected devices is growing rapidly. According to Cisco, there were 500 million connected devices in 2003 and 12.5 billion in 2010, and these numbers are expected to rise to 50 billion in 2020.

While the Internet of Things has great promise, important technical and policy challenges must be addressed for it to reach its full potential. First, explosive growth in the number of connected devices will put a heavy strain on existing communications infrastructures. Second, new technologies must be developed to support connectivity for highly mobile objects (such as planes or cars) and extremely remote objects (such as oil pipelines). Finally, if we want to achieve a truly global Internet of Things, common standards of communication need to be established among all of these connected objects so they can communicate and “understand” one another.

For mobile to continue its upward trajectory, conditions must remain ripe for innovation. In order to set an effective policy agenda, it is critical to understand the key enablers that have empowered the mobile industry to become a center of global innovation and economic growth in the first place.

There is no single answer, as not all players in the mobile ecosystem thrive on the same model of innovation. As we have described before, the mobile ecosystem can be viewed as a value chain—a series of players that work together to enable smartphones and other devices to exist. At the consumer end of the value chain we have a rapidly proliferating universe of mobile applications and services, created by content developers, software companies, start-ups, and others. In the middle are the manufacturers of components, devices, and infrastructure. Underlying all of this, we have the creation of core communications technologies, without which the industry could not begin to function. All links within the chain are essential, and depend upon one another to thrive, but they rely upon varying innovation models.

App developers, for example, thrive on staying agile and capitalizing on trends. A developer can build an app in days or weeks on a minimal budget, go live, and make changes on the fly. The market, made up of millions of small businesses, has succeeded beautifully through individual experimentation and trial and error.

In contrast, core mobile technologies developed through industry standards follow an entirely different trajectory. These fundamental technologies are developed through decades of research, typically by a relatively small number of companies, without certainty that they will be adopted. For example, during the development and roll-out of 4G, two technologies competed for prominence in the core technology space: LTE and WiMax. A small number of companies invested enormous resources into these two 4G technologies. After nearly a decade of competition to best address the core technology needs in the marketplace, LTE has achieved significantly wider adoption and commercial value than WiMax. Such significant up-front investments in R&D push the industry forward, but the companies responsible assume significant risk with no certainty of return. Exhibit 13 details the long and uncertain process many technologies, including those built into standards, have followed on the path to widespread adoption.

Fundamental Enablers of Growth in Mobile

BCG analyzed the critical factors that have contributed to mobile’s phenomenal success worldwide. Based on this analysis, we identified seven key enablers that have spurred growth throughout the mobile industry. Because two of the enablers—IP frameworks and standards-setting—are less frequently addressed in the literature, we focus significant attention on them here; however, all seven enablers have given rise to mobile’s success.

Strong IP Frameworks. The 3G and 4G technologies driving today’s mobile devices are the cumulative result of thousands of technological innovations over the past four decades. Tomorrow’s cutting-edge core technologies will be based upon research that began ten or more years prior to commercial launch. For example, the research behind text messaging began in the early 1980s. More than 15 years later, text messaging became widely commercialized.

The innovation model used by developers of core technologies is very much akin to the model used by pharmaceutical companies. Large and long-term investments in multiple technologies may lead to a single widely commercialized product (while numerous R&D projects never make it to commercialization). Nonetheless, R&D investment in mobile technologies continues to accelerate, reaching almost $100 billion annually, and growing at a rate of 9 percent year-over-year since 2009. Companies developing IP in mobile technologies invest more as a percent of revenue in R&D (23 percent) than any other industry, except biotechnology (27 percent). This includes traditionally R&D-heavy industries such as pharmaceuticals (14 percent). (See Exhibit 14.)

The development of core technologies requires both strong IP protection (including patent protection to incentivize innovation) and licensing to ensure broad access to these enabling technologies. The core technologies are the oxygen within the mobile ecosystem: fundamental to life, invisible to the user, and necessary for all other functions to continue. The licensing model ensures that patented technologies are universally available while providing a mechanism to compensate innovators (through licensing revenue), thereby encouraging additional investment in next-generation technologies.

The current patent framework has proven to be highly effective at incentivizing mobile innovation and investment. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, mobile patents have grown from virtually nonexistent to almost 400,000 families (that is, a set of patents covering one invention in multiple countries) since 1985, representing 6 percent of total patent activity (total patent activity is measured as mobile’s share of Patent Cooperation Treaty applications).

While patent regimes vary from country to country, nations with strong patent protection tend to see more innovation than their counterparts with less robust patent frameworks. IP incentives and protections, as well as support for licensing core technologies, are key to successfully promoting innovation across the mobile ecosystem.

Collaborative Industry Standards-Setting Processes. Standards-setting bodies are tasked to solve the industry’s most complex technology challenges. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)—the primary standards-setting body for 3G and 4G technology standards—unites six telecommunications standards-setting organizations from around the world in a self-driven, collaborative, and meritocratic process. While the standards-setting process has laid the groundwork for mobile’s historic rise, it is not always well understood, even within the industry.

A standard starts out with a clear, bold goal for a future level of desired technical performance. From 2G to 3G, for example, the goal was to increase capacity tenfold. The industry works together to find effective solutions to the technical challenge.

• A work item is proposed around a given challenge, and once it is approved by members, working groups identify industry needs and develop requirements.
• Once consensus is reached on the list of requirements, it is submitted to the system architecture and procedures working groups.
• These groups accept proposals for technologies that fulfill the requirements; proposals are combined and revised over the course of months of research, simulations, and debate.

Companies across the value chain—from component design and manufacturing, to OEMs, to core technology innovators—have the opportunity to contribute to technology solutions and vote on adoption of all proposals. This same process is subsequently carried out to identify the technical protocols associated with each requirement. Once technological solutions have been drafted and specifications agreed upon, they are incorporated into the standard for publication. After publication, the standard can be tested and incorporated into products.

As a point of reference, setting standards for 2G, 3G, and 4G required participation from hundreds of companies all over the world:

• 2G (global system for mobile or GSM) . This effort entailed 15 years spent on 2G-related standard releases, with more than 200 companies and 13 countries involved, and took approximately 866,000 person hours.
• 3G (wideband code division multiple access or WCDMA) . This endeavor involved 11 years spent on 3G-related standard releases, with more than 300 companies and 39 countries involved, and took approximately 950,000 person hours.
• 4G (long-term evolution or LTE) . This undertaking required more than nine years spent on 4G-related standard releases, with 320 companies and 43 countries involved, and took more than 1 million person hours (and counting).
• According to 3GPP, less than 10 percent of participating companies have submitted technical contributions, with the majority of contributions being made by fewer than 15 companies.
• Every year, more mobile companies from diverse regions across the globe participate in the standards-setting process.

Exhibit 15 illustrates the standards-setting process using one feature within the LTE standard: device to device (D2D) communications. D2D communications—which took 400+ companies nearly 200,000 hours over 3.5 years—only represents 14 out of 492 specifications incorporated into Release 12 of the LTE standard. Moreover, Release 12 is one of five existing releases setting parameters for 4G alone.

Standards benefit the entire mobile value chain. Without standards, companies that build mobile devices and services would endure significant additional technology risk. (See Exhibit 16.) By setting a standard such as LTE, technology risk is eliminated for thousands of companies around the world. The incredible improvement in performance from 2G to 3G to 4G indicates that the standards-setting process is working.

Because the mobile industry depends upon competing companies sharing IP, the standards-setting bodies have put a licensing model in place. By ensuring that essential technologies can be licensed, new industry entrants can more easily enter the market and compete on an even footing, and consumers benefit through lower costs and enhanced global interoperability. Over the past five years, every segment of the value chain has grown, and competition is increasing over many segments.

• According to IDC, global average selling prices for smartphones decreased 23 percent from 2007 through 2014, while prices for the lowest-end phones decreased 63 percent over this period.
• The number of global OEMs grew from 71 to 172 from 2007 through 2014, with increasingly broad geographic representation, including new entrants from emerging markets such as China and India.
• Three of the top five players in 2007 lost significant market share over the past seven years.

A World Without Standards or Licensing

The mobile industry depends on the streamlined coordination of many innovators to effectively develop the technologies that power mobile. Without clear industry-driven standards, many competing platforms would develop. These competing platforms would splinter off, rather than reaping the combined benefit of all global technologies, and both industry players and consumers would suffer.

In a world without industry standards, the mobile industry’s distinct business models would be disrupted, resulting in several losses in value to industry players:

• Competing platforms would duplicate fundamental R&D, leading to higher development costs for mobile products.
• Innovation would slow without a mechanism to pool and build on the best technologies, decreasing the impact of mobile products and services.
• Companies would have reduced access to the best technologies due to geographic barriers.
• Network operators and device makers would have to bet on one platform—and would likely stick with this platform (due to high switching costs) regardless of its progress.

Each of these factors would translate into even greater lost value to consumers:

• Consumer choice would be restricted to a few incompatible proprietary systems, as opposed to the myriad choices in devices and services available to them today.
• Consumers would have access to less technologically advanced products and services, reducing functionality and decreasing time and money saved.
• High prices for the core technology would be passed on to consumers, limiting adoption, with a disproportionately negative effect in emerging markets.
• Lack of interoperability between platforms, devices, and geographies would hinder access and usage.

Exhibit 17 highlights many of the often subtle ways in which standards enhance the user experience.

Spectrum Allocation for Mobile Data Traffic.  One of the biggest constraints on more mobile data usage is the availability, allocation, and use of spectrum—the bands of radio waves over which data and voice communications (as well as other over-the-air media) travel. Spectrum is a critical resource for mobile networks—without sufficient spectrum, they cannot operate. Core technology companies use spectrum to achieve the greatest capacity and deliver the best user experience.

There are three types of spectrum: licensed for exclusive use, unlicensed, and shared licensed. Although more spectrum of each type is necessary, exclusive-use licensed spectrum is especially critical because it provides absolute protection from interference and is therefore used to deliver wide area, ubiquitous connectivity on an interference-free basis. Fortunately, policymakers around the world recognize the industry’s vital need for this spectrum on a continuous basis, and there are many initiatives under way.

Free International Trade and Capital Flows.  Free trade in IP facilitates global adoption of superior technologies. Countries with high import taxes limit mobile penetration and reduce consumer access to the best technologies. Mobile technologies can be used as a tool for economic growth, but only if they can achieve widespread adoption. For example, Ghana has taken a step in this direction with its recent decision to abolish its 20 percent import duty on mobile phones. By eliminating this tax, Ghana expects to reduce handset costs (as taxes make up approximately 35 percent of the cost of a smartphone in Ghana) and increase mobile phone penetration.

Likewise, low-cost manufacturing brings down equipment and device prices for consumers. When barriers to international trade and capital flows are low, customers around the world get the best technologies at the lowest prices.

Healthy Network Operator Environment.  Network operators must invest billions of dollars a year to deploy the most advanced technologies. In many parts of the world, these operators struggle to earn adequate returns on their capital investments. Operators and consumers can become ensnared in a catch-22. When network operators make substantial capital investments to meet consumer demand, prices for mobile data plans may rise, as operators seek a return on investment. Conversely, prices will be lower for consumers in areas where network operator investment is lower, but consumers may receive subpar services.

It is in everyone’s interest to ensure that network operators are motivated to roll out 4G capabilities and invest in new platforms in order to support the integration of more advanced technologies in the future. Market structures must strike a balance in order to encourage robust network investments while delivering affordable prices to consumers.

Dynamic Digital Services Ecosystem.  The digital services ecosystem is thriving, which drives stronger investment in core technologies and infrastructure. This, in turn, drives additional investment in digital services. At very low cost, application programming interfaces (APIs) place in the hands of entrepreneurs the means to create value—and thereby reduce the cost of innovation by orders of magnitude. The use of open APIs and tools for developers feeds this virtuous cycle.

In addition, a dynamic digital services ecosystem is fueled by highly educated, skilled innovators. To sustain the levels of technological advancement that we have seen thus far in mobile, we must support an environment rich with educational and entrepreneurial opportunities.

Trust and Transparency.  The use of mobile devices can create challenges for consumers and others that require fair resolution. One of the most important of these involves data privacy and security and how data are used. We must balance the potential value of personal data with the rights of individuals and societies to determine what are, and are not, legitimate uses of data. (See  Rethinking Personal Data: Strengthening Trust , a report by The Boston Consulting Group and the World Economic Forum, May 2012.) Without a sense of trust among consumers, mobile will not live up to its full potential.

Mobile innovators are expected to invest approximately $4 trillion in capex and R&D over the next five years. To maintain the pace of innovation and ensure that the mobile revolution continues to have a powerful economic and social impact, governments and policymakers must take action to stimulate innovation, accessibility, and growth. The right policies can incentivize investment in next-generation technologies (5G and beyond), ensure widespread access to mobile services, and promote adoption among businesses and consumers. As mobile continues to mature over the coming years, we believe these policies will become increasingly critical to the industry’s success.

Big and Making It Bigger

In its brief history, mobile has already had a sweeping impact on the global economy, businesses small and large, and consumers nearly everywhere. As we enter the next stage of the mobile technology revolution, we encourage policymakers to help sustain and foster an environment that will continue to support investment and innovation in mobile technologies.

The policy agenda we recommend focuses on three key goals: incentivize investment and innovation; expand access to services and devices; and promote adoption and usage of mobile technologies.

Incentivize Investment and Innovation

The mobile industry has been propelled by hundreds of billions of dollars in up-front, risky, R&D investments. The following policy recommendations are designed to encourage continued investment in innovation.

Incentivize technology innovators through strong patent protection and market-driven licensing. Technological innovation is research intensive. In order to innovate, compete, and drive the next generation of mobile technologies, companies must invest enormous sums in research and development. Much of this investment is poured into technologies that never reach the market. For those technologies that do, it is critical to have a predictable and market-driven process for licensing IP. As noted earlier in this report, mobile players invested an aggregate of $1.8 trillion in capex and R&D from 2009 through 2013 and are expected to invest approximately an additional $4 trillion between 2014 and 2020. Such heavy, sustained, up-front expenditures require patience, confidence, and a significant assumption of risk.

Policymakers can support these tremendous private investments by ensuring that a robust IP framework is in place to protect patent rights and facilitate market-driven licensing. Weakening patent protection would reduce the incentives currently motivating innovators to develop technologies essential for transition to 5G and beyond. These protections help safeguard hard-won innovations and enable companies to obtain a return on their investment in innovation.

Support collaborative, industry-driven standards-setting. Standards-setting bodies in telecommunications play a vital role within the mobile industry. Industry standards promote interoperability across the entire mobile value chain; reduce technology risk and lower costs for manufacturers and network operators who must commit to emerging technologies; and deliver a frictionless experience for end users.

The mobile industry governs itself through standards-setting bodies and should be encouraged to continue this historically effective self-governance. The private sector has led the way in order to ensure that mobile technologies solve critical industry challenges, function smoothly across geographies, and promote interoperability for all players across the mobile value chain.

Support an environment that fosters experimentation. The proliferation of sensors and connectivity—across devices and machines—will create new consumer and industrial applications that are hard to imagine today. To effectively take advantage of these digital innovations, companies, governments, and individuals need to have an open mind and a bias toward experimentation. Policymakers can support industry-driven standards for complex new technologies—such as machine to machine and the Internet of Things—and avoid unnecessary regulations or policies that limit technological experimentation on behalf of these emerging technologies.

Expand Access to Services and Devices

Consumers in both developed and emerging markets are embracing mobile like never before. To expand access to devices and services, policymakers should take action to allocate additional spectrum, encourage vigorous private investment in infrastructure, and support measures that bolster interoperability.

Ensure that adequate spectrum is available for mobile. The amount of spectrum currently released for mobile communications is far less than that required to support future growth in mobile data traffic. Technology has helped overcome similar constraints in the past, and it will no doubt continue to do so, but governments and operators also need to do more to alleviate issues of availability, allocation, and harmonization that constrain the ability of various participants in the mobile ecosystem to invest in infrastructure and deliver services. (See Delivering Digital Infrastructure , a report by The Boston Consulting Group and the World Economic Forum, April 2014.)

Ensure that levels of regulation for network operators are appropriate. Capital investments in networks are critical to consumer adoption of mobile devices. New infrastructure and network upgrades can spur greater adoption and transform the user experience. It is important that regulation supports the delicate balance of simultaneously encouraging investment among network operators, while also promoting competition to ensure consumer choice and affordable solutions.

Reduce barriers to trade. Tariffs increase prices for imported goods and artificially raise prices for businesses and consumers. Higher prices make imported devices and technologies less accessible to a population. To ensure that businesses have the tools to compete at peak global productivity levels, and that consumers benefit from the most advanced devices and technologies, prices for imported goods should correspond to world market prices. Removing quotas and import taxes, such as tariffs, supports free trade in mobile devices.

Encourage the growth of the digital-services ecosystem. Governments should encourage investment and growth within the digital-services sector. Robust fixed and mobile infrastructure, healthy environments for VC investments, and innovation-friendly business environments are all key factors in a dynamic digital-services ecosystem. In addition, policies that support high-tech education will ensure that highly skilled employees are prepared to contribute to the growth of mobile technologies.

Promote Adoption and Usage of Mobile Technologies

To ensure that the mobile revolution continues and expands its powerful economic and social impacts, governments and policymakers must take action to promote adoption and usage of mobile technologies among businesses and consumers.

Transparent data management and privacy protections. While personal data can be enormously valuable to unlocking economic and social benefits, individuals and societies have the right to determine how their personal data will be used. Without this trust, consumers will be significantly less inclined to use mobile technologies to the fullest extent possible.

Consumer confidence in data protection will be increasingly important in the ever-expanding “smart” society in which personal data are generated and collected by a proliferation of devices and services. Existing policies currently do not address future applications of mobile that are fast becoming a reality. Policies are needed to protect consumer data against intentional or unintentional security breach or misuse.

Experiment with eGovernment and mobile government services. Companies, governments, schools, hospitals, not-for-profits, and nongovernmental organizations, among others, increasingly realize they need to interact with their constituencies—not just online but via smartphones and tablets. Policymakers should encourage policies that promote adoption of mobile devices by these organizations.

The mobile industry stands out and can be a model for other industries for how innovation and market-driven collaboration can lead to massive opportunities for growth and impact.

The impact of mobile is unprecedented. It has lifted the global economy, created millions of new jobs, and changed billions of people’s lives for the better in record time. Mobile technologies have become a cornerstone of the present and future global economy, both as an industry in its own right and as an enabler of opportunities in every sector.

Despite the enormous investments that have already been made in mobile technologies, we are still at the dawn of mobile’s history. For this industry to sustain its extraordinary impact on jobs, economic growth, and technological progress, enormous levels of innovation are still needed. This innovation will drive the next generation of devices, create new growth opportunities for mobile players across the value chain, and ensure that the promise of the mobile revolution is fully realized for SMEs and consumers. Governments have thus far served the mobile industry well by incentivizing innovation and investment. If supportive policies continue, we have no doubt that the mobile revolution will continue, and expand, and drive unprecedented growth for many years to come.

Appendix: Methodology

The following describes our approach to measuring the economic impact of mobile technologies.

Measuring mGDP

BCG developed a comprehensive global production and consumption model for this report, in order to account for the complexity and interdependency of companies across the mobile value chain. For the consumption side, we consider end-user sales of devices as well as intermediary inputs for device production for each country (for example, a device OEM needs components for its device production). For production, we break down the device retail price into discrete categories in order to calculate production along the device value chain (for example, retail markup, licensing, components, and assembly). For each of these steps we conducted a detailed analysis of the manufacturing location in order to attribute the appropriate portion of the value to each country. By assessing production values against consumption values, we determine net exports (or net imports) for each country.

To calculate mobile’s contribution to overall GDP for our six countries, we used the expenditure method of GDP calculation.

Consumption. mGDP consumption includes spending on mobile devices, mobile connectivity services, and mobile commerce. Mobile device consumption includes purchases of feature phones and smartphones, tablets, and related accessories. Mobile connectivity services include spending on mobile data, voice, and text services. Mobile commerce transactions include goods and services sold via mobile devices, content and applications purchased via mobile devices, and mobile advertising spending. However, we do not include transaction values of money transfers via mobile devices (for example, over a banking app on a tablet).

Investments. For mGDP, we consider the relevant investments by mobile value chain participants. These investments include capital expenditures of mobile operators and all other value chain participants (retail and manufacturing of devices, mobile connectivity services, and the app economy). Further, we include investments in spectrum licenses and enterprise mobility investments. As is common practice, we do not include R&D investments.

Government spending. The largest portion of governments’ contribution to mGDP is purchasing devices and providing connectivity services for government employees; these are already covered in our consumption measures. However, governments also contribute to mGDP via individual subsidies and tax breaks for the mobile sector in each country (such as the lifeline program in the U.S.), and this is included in our measures of mGDP as well.

Net exports. Net exports capture the difference between exports and imports. For example, mobile-related products produced in the U.S. but consumed in other countries count toward U.S. GDP. However, products produced elsewhere but consumed in the U.S. do not count and must be subtracted from consumption.

Measuring Job Creation Linked to Mobile Technologies

For our jobs estimates, we calculated revenues for each step in the value chain, based on global market research data and our global production model. The jobs figures were then derived by dividing these revenues by the revenue contributions per employee for each business. These revenue contribution factors are based on leading pure players in each country for each business model separately.

To derive our estimates, we developed a comprehensive macroeconomic model, which builds on a number of sources including the following.

• A comprehensive bottom-up database of key financial and performance indicators (such as revenues, employees, capex, and R&D expenditures) of more than 500 companies participating in the mobile value chain
• Data provided by the leading market research organizations for this sector (including IDC, Ovum, Forrester, Gartner, IE Market Research, and Investment Reports) and data provided by official and government organizations (for example, national bureaus of statistics and the World Bank)
• Interviews with four senior experts on the mobile economy around the globe (internal BCG experts as well as external industry experts)

Measuring SME Adoption of Mobile Technologies

Our key findings on the economic impact of mobile technology adoption by SMEs are derived from our survey of the leaders and founders of SMEs. We used these data to segment respondents as mobile leaders, followers, and laggards and to project the economic impact of a portion of these companies moving to a higher level of mobile usage.

Survey Methodology and Design. From September through November of 2014, we surveyed around 3,500 leaders and founders of SMEs in the U.S., Germany, South Korea, Brazil, China, and India. Approximately 1,500 of these respondents completed the survey online. The remainder (respondents in China and India) completed the survey over the phone (in China) or were interviewed in person (in India). The surveys consisted of about 55 questions (the precise number depended on how certain questions were answered).

Survey respondents were screened according to several criteria. Each respondent was the company’s CEO, founder, vice president or mid-level to senior manager. We made a conscious decision to focus on the business users of mobile technologies and not necessarily on the mobile/IT decision makers (for example, the director of IT). However, we required respondents to have a good understanding of how mobile technologies are used in their businesses.

As each country defines SMEs in a different fashion, we had to create a standard definition that could be applied to all countries. For the purpose of this study, an SME was defined as a company with up to 499 employees. Further, we grouped SMEs into three categories: microbusinesses (fewer than 10 employees), small businesses (between 10 and 49 employees), and medium businesses (50 to 499 employees).

Survey Quotas. To help ensure a credible and comprehensive sample, we set quotas based on company size. Our sample was split equally among microbusinesses, small businesses, and medium businesses, with 150 respondents in each segment. (See Exhibit 18 for a detailed breakdown of our sample by country.)

We did not set quotas for mobile usage intensity since we wanted the sample to be representative of the average degree of technology adoption by SMEs in those countries. In addition, we targeted respondents from a broad range of industries without setting specific quotas by industry. Attention checks (simple, unrelated questions to test if a respondent is paying attention) were placed throughout the survey, and we controlled for straight lining (identical responses to a block of questions). Those who failed these controls were excluded from the survey results.

Types of Technology Users. Based on the adoption of specific mobile applications, we categorized each respondent in one of three categories of mobile intensity: mobile laggards, mobile followers, or mobile leaders.

We evaluated adoption of mobile applications in terms of three categories: basic productivity tools (such as voice calls or mobile e-mails), operational tools (such as real-time job tracking or mobile data capture), and sales and marketing tools (such as a mobile-friendly website or a company app). (See Exhibit 19.)

• Mobile Laggards . These SMEs do not use any mobile operations or marketing and sales tools.
• Mobile Followers . These SMEs use at least one mobile application frequently—either an operations tool or a marketing and sales tool.
• Mobile Leaders . These SMEs use at least three mobile applications frequently. The three applications had to be part of the same group of tools (that is, three operations or three marketing and sales tools), thus showing that the company had reached a high level of mobile sophistication within that category.

Weighting. Respondents were not weighted because we found that the contribution of micro, small, and medium businesses to GDP was roughly equivalent among these three categories.

We conducted analyses to verify that our findings were consistent across industries and regardless of company size. (See Exhibit 20.)

Revenue and Job Growth. A company’s size was assessed on the basis of the number of its employees in 2014. A company’s revenue growth and job growth were both based on self-reported data over the past three years.

Macroeconomic Impact Projections. For each country, we projected scenarios of how the job growth and revenue increases recorded in our survey data could translate into a broader economic impact. This allowed us to understand SME performance improvement in the context of the economic conditions of each country. The purpose of these projections was to provide a sense of the potential magnitude of the economic impact of SMEs’ mobile technology advancement. The projections should not be viewed as predictions or precise valuations.

Broadly speaking, we developed a simple projection model based on the size of the SME contribution to the economy in terms of both employment and GDP. This required making specific assumptions about the SME sector. We used secondary research to assess the percentage of micro, small, and medium businesses in each country.

From our survey, we were able to estimate the proportion of laggards, followers, and leaders among the micro, small, and medium businesses that participated. We also calculated the growth rate, over the past three years, of the laggards, followers, and leaders in participating micro, small, and medium businesses.

We then compared the growth rates of laggards and followers with those of leaders and projected the difference onto the overall population of laggards and followers in order to estimate the financial and employment contribution of the SME sector.

Calculating Consumer Surplus

Key findings on the impact of mobile technologies on consumers are taken from the consumer impact survey we conducted across the six countries analyzed: the U.S., Germany, South Korea, Brazil, China, and India. The survey is comprised of three major sections: a multiple-choice questionnaire, maximum difference scaling (MaxDiff), and conjoint analysis.

Survey Methodology and Design. From September through November of 2014, we surveyed around 7,500 consumers in the six countries analyzed (1,000 or more respondents per country). Approximately 5,000 of these respondents completed the survey online. Exhibit 18 provides a detailed breakdown of our consumer sample by country.

In India, the survey was completed face-to-face, with computer-assisted personal interviewing and door to door sampling. Respondents in China were recruited offline but then completed the survey online at a survey center. This was to avoid selection bias in China and India, where consumers who use the Internet are more likely to be technologically advanced.

We balanced the sample across city tiers and geography in both China and India. For China, we chose five tier 1 to tier 2 cities (such as Beijing and Xi’an), four tier 3 to tier 4 cities, and three tier 5 to tier 6 cities, in order to get a broad range of respondents. For India, the overall sample design was based on the Indian Readership Survey, the largest syndicated survey conducted in India. Using this rubric, we balanced our sample by geography (north, south, east, and west) and by residential location type (urban or rural).

The online surveys consisted of around 45 questions (the precise number depended on how certain questions were answered). The survey was terminated for those who did not own a mobile phone, and only those who completed the whole survey were counted.

Survey Quotas. In each country, we set quotas based on demographics (age, gender, and income group) in order to ensure a comprehensive and credible sample.

Survey Analysis. Throughout the survey, we conducted attention checks and discarded respondents who selected the same answer throughout (straight liners). Results were also “sense checked”—for example, we removed respondents who gave unrealistic valuations to their mobile phones (such as U.S. consumers who responded $100 million). Specifically, we rejected those who responded with valuations above the ninetieth percentile. This ensured a conservative approach to the valuation analysis.

Mobile technology valuation. To understand the value that consumers put on mobile technologies, we used an empirical research technique called conjoint analysis.

Conjoint analysis is used to extract the implicit valuation of a given product (or that of its features) by analyzing how people prefer different sets of bundled features for a product or service. This approach has two main advantages: It is more objective than self-reported valuation (people often struggle to put a price on their goods). And it provides a true valuation, as opposed to merely a willingness to pay.

For our conjoint analysis, we created a thought exercise for respondents, asking them to project themselves into an over-crowded mobile environment in which they were given the option to downgrade or give up their mobile phones for a certain period of time in exchange for a cash reward or other compensation.

Four different variables (device, time, network, and access to Wi-Fi) were combined with different options and cash prizes, and respondents were asked to choose the combination they liked the best (or they could choose “none of them”).

Acknowledgments

This report is a product of BCG’s Technology, Media & Telecommunications practice.

The authors are indebted to multiple BCG partners and colleagues for their contributions and insights during the preparation of this report: Myonghyon (Brandon) Cho (Seoul), Amrik Dhillon (San Francisco), Patrick Forth (Sydney), Denis Herrmann (São Paolo), Daniel Hilkert (Munich), Laura Jones (San Francisco), Fredrik Lind (Stockholm), Nina Morton (San Francisco), François Schaus (San Francisco), Ludwig Stahl (San Francisco), Kerry Wei (San Francisco), and Chen Yu (Shanghai). They are also grateful to Derek Aberle, David Dean, Kirti Gupta, Jason Kenagy, Kurt Kjelland, Mark Mills, Don Rosenberg, Enrique Rueda-Sabater, Mark Snyder, Nate Tibbitz, and Haris Zisimopoulos.

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How the mobile revolution is impacting our lives

FILE PHOTO:  REUTERS/Henry Nicholls/File Photo

Mobile technology impacts all areas of our lives today. The revolution in mobile technology began in the 1940s with the use of two-way radios when engineers working at AT&T developed cells for mobile phone base stations.

Then in 1973, Motorola launched the first mass-produced handheld mobile phones. These early mobile phones, often referred to as 0G mobile phones, led to the phones used now which rely on 4G or 5G mobile technology.

The mobile revolution has enabled global communities to form, but there are concerns too, the impact of which we look at here.

Online entertainment The mobile revolution has seen all of us spend more time online than ever before. Whether catching up with family, shopping, doing research, watching movies or gaming, all of this is now all possible at any time, wherever we are.

Nowadays, almost all businesses offer mobile-accessible sites for smartphones and tablets. Whether you are placing an order for a new pair of jeans, researching the best financial advisor or wanting to play a casino game on the move like blackjack mobile , it is really easy to do all of this. You can begin a game of blackjack at home and continue it on the bus or train.

Increased use of social media platforms Since the launch of social media in 1997 with Six Degrees, which allowed users to upload a profile and make friends with other users, there are now many other social media platforms like Facebook (2004) that give us real-time access into the lives of friends, family, celebrities and businesses. These offer global communication on a scale never seen before which have led to the rise of social movements such as Black Lives Matter.

The impact is not all positive, the Cambridge Analytica scandal involving Facebook involved the harvesting of Facebook data of 87 million people that was used for advertising during elections. Also, for young people in particular, social media can harm their self-esteem.

Broader communication channels Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, and now most people carry a mobile phone with them. However, communication is now not only audio but through messaging, social media and video calls.  2020 was the year where lockdowns and social distancing laws saw Zoom become a household name, being used globally by 300 million people each day. Issues with security and privacy have been flagged, issues that are the highest priority in the mobile revolution.

Safer in-store shopping Shopping online is practical and convenient for many, but a visit to the high street is still popular and stopping for coffee or a leisurely meal provides the social contact we all need. The mobile revolution has given us contactless cards and phone payments, providing additional security with regards to our finances as keying in a pin number is no longer needed and we need not have to access cash from an ATM.

Fast access to information Mobile technology means that we have access to information at our fingertips, wherever we are. “Google is your friend” is now listed in urban dictionaries, showing how many of us search for instant answers without doing more than pull out our phones or ask Alexa. From information about travel, weather or legal information there is app technology that will make the searching simple.

Accurate health tracking The mobile revolution has also seen a rise in fitness devices worn on the wrist offering instant feedback and recommendations. Not only recording lap times, fitness devices can also monitor pulse rates, blood pressure, sleeping patterns.

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The Revolution of the Mobile Phone and It’s Revolutionary Aspects

      When the public mobile phone was first invented in the 1940s  (Farley, 2005) it did not have the advanced design and capabilities that it has now. Additionally, due to the restrictions that the early mobile phone faced imposed by the Federal Communications Commission (Farley, 2005), commercial use of the mobile phone by the general US population was heavily forestalled. The first mobile phone in the US came in the form of a pay-phone that was available for use on the Metroliner train service running between Washington DC and New York city (Farley, 2005).  This mobile phone allowed passengers to place calls while in-route at 160 kilometers per hour (Farley, 2005). It wasn’t until 1973 that Martin Cooper, who was working at Motorola, invented the first handheld cell phone (Farley, 2005). Although the demand for such technology was present, the FCC’s inability to grant approval for commercial use greatly impacted the mobile phones ability to grow (Farely, 2005). Nevertheless, cell phone popularity in the US continued to flourish reaching a total of 1,300,855 customers by 1987 (Farley, 2005). On August 15, 1996, another great breakthrough for the mobile phone took place when Nokia introduced the Communicator, which meshed the mobile phone and the handheld computer together (Farley, 2005). Equipped with a QWERTY keyboard, the Nokia Communicator allowed individuals to send and receive faxes, check email messages, and visit the Internet (Farley, 2005). However, because cellular networks were optimized for voice and not data at the time, effectiveness of such tasks was limited (Farley, 2005). Nevertheless, by the mid-1990s, when mobile phones became smaller and practical, data became the central interest for many system designers (Farley, 2005). Since then, several new revolutionary applications and services have been combined with the mobile phone. Such revolutionary applications and services include Java, Multi-Media Messaging (MMS), Music, TV, GPS, etc. (Wilcox, 2005). As a result of such new revolutionary applications, the popularity of the mobile smartphone started to take off. 

      Currently, the mobile phone continues to remain revolutionary especially in the area of social movements. Combined with the steady climb of social media, the rise of the mobile phone and social media have coupled together to contribute to augmented reality (Jurgenson, 2012). Augmented reality is the process of linking the power of the digital (creating and disseminating networked information), with the power of the physical (occupying geographic space with flesh-and-blood bodies) to create an atmosphere of augmented revolution (Jurgenson, 2012). This phenomena, can be observed through past social movements such as the UK Riots, Arab Spring, Occupy and several other protests which are essentially big gatherings of digitally-connected individuals in a physical space that have become the new norm (Jurgenson, 2012). For example, through being connected by the intersection of both the physical and the digital, Egypt protest organizers, were able to effectively mobilize massive numbers of people by distributing information online about how to deal with tear gas and how crowds should effectively move about the city (Jurgenson, 2012). Therefore, simply deeming social movements such as the Arab Spring as a “Twitter Revolution”, fails to account for the role the physical (society) as well as the digital (technology) play in augmented reality (Jurgenson, 2012), in which both humans and media merge together to create change.

Additionally, if there is anything from the history of the mobile phone that we can take away, is that usage of the mobile phone will continue to grow and provide breakthrough changes in society. With the increased availability of mobile phones by the majority of the US population (77% of US adults reported owning a smartphone in 2016) (Rainie and Perrin, 2017), the kind of growth and breakthrough changes that will occur will be of great significance. Additionally, as society continues to develop and experiment with wearable network devices such as Apple Watch and Fitbit (mostly all connected to mobile phones), it can be certain that more of our technology in the future will be wearable from the outside and perhaps even from the inside as well (Gee, Time, 2017). Moreover, with the emergence of online-social-mobile communication technologies revolutionary ability to cater to individual personalization, I believe that in the future, wearable network devices will take personalization to the next level. For example, as describe in Time magazine, wearable technology will serve individual needs in a more personalized way by providing individuals with content they need before they even know they need it (2017). By examining things such as a person’s tears or mood through special sensors, wearable technology will predict and thus feed humans more personalized content than ever before (Time, 2017). Such advances in new wearable technology however, just as the mobile phone experienced with the FCC during its early years, may be forestalled by the new laws and guidelines that will have to be set in place to properly address security, moral, and ethical issues that may arise (Time, 2017).

      Furthermore, I believe, that the contemporary stage online-social-mobile media is taking is very revolutionary, in the case of the mobile phone through augmented reality, which seems to align with some of Hauben’s ideas. When Hauben wrote, “What the Net Means to Me,” he viewed the Internet as a medium for allowing people to have their voice heard and a way of questioning and organizing people’s experiences so as to have a better grip on a problem or question (1994). In addition, Hauben believed that in order for the Internet to remain a forum for public expression and discussion for the people, it should remain untainted by commercial interests (1994). Hauben feared that if commercial companies took over the Internet, they would not allow people to have control over their lives and surroundings which could harm democracy (1994). Of course, at the time that Hauben wrote his paper, he was not able to foresee how commercialized the Internet would become. By allowing people to freely express their opinions and thoughts online, I believe that Hauben’s vision for the net would be very important and significant in helping people undermine the upper power institutions have (1994). This Hauberian concept, aligns well with Jurgenson’s explanation of how mobile phones and social media during the Occupy movement, helped protester undermine traditional news-gatekeepers by shooting their own videos, photos, organizing on Facebook and tweeting to the world. Such elevated autonomy and freedom to express themselves through the use of mobile phones and social media, allowed the Occupy protesters to shape their own narrative, strategies, and goals in the media instead of it being influenced and reported through the private interests of traditional media (2012).

       Furthermore, as social movements continue to use technology (mobile phones, social media, etc.) in new ways, technology can be assumed to enhance democracy (Lunceford, 2006). Although many may disagree due to the illegal activity involved, according to Lunceford, Hackers are the ideal group to look up to when examining the question of how technology can be used in revolutionary ways (2016). Through illegally gaining unauthorized access to computer systems, Hackers are able to use technology to forward political ends (2016). Due to this, many have started to refer to the Hacker community as their own social movement under the new social movement (NSM) approach since they are primarily social, attempt to create change through developing alternative lifestyles and changing values, and are located within civil society (2016). However, whether or not Hackers, mobile phones, and social media through augmented reality, will continue to expand the ways in which technology can be used in revolutionary ways (such as promoting democracy), will have to be determined by how such elements handle the social movement efforts of the future.

Works Cited:

Farley, Tom, and Nigel Wilcox, et al. “Mobile Telephone History” and “What’s next in mobile telephony and will it succeed?”. Future Mobile Phones , vol. 101, no. No. 3/4, 2005, www.telenor.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/T05_3-4.pdf .

Jurgenson, Nathan. “When Atoms Meet Bits: Social Media, the Mobile Web and Augmented Revolution.” Future Internet, vol. 4, no. 4, 2012, pp. 83–91., doi:10.3390/fi4010083. https://ai2-s2-pdfs.s3.amazonaws.com/7c13/a2ce650958e43d122f912ee1db24e662daa7.pdf .  

Rainie , Lee, and Andrew Perrin . “10 Facts about Smartphones as the IPhone Turns 10.” Pew Research Center , 28 June 2017, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/28/10-facts-about-smartphones/ .

Gee, Martin, et al. “A Day In The Life Of Wearable Tech.” Time, time.com/see-the-wearable-tech-of-the-future/.

Hauben, Michael. “What the Net Means to Me.” ACN Volume 6 No 1 Spring 1994, www.ais.org/~hauben/Michael_Hauben/Collected_Works/Amateur_Computerist/What_the_Net_Means_to_Me.txt .

Lunceford , Brett Lance. Democracy And The Hacker Movement: Information Technologies And Political Action. The Pennsylvania State University, 2006, etda.libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/717.

Hand Old-Retro-Phone . Digital image.  Pexels.com . 13 Nov 2011, https://www.pexels.com/photo/hand-old-retro-phone-9165/.

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Mobile Revolution and Rural Development

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• First Online: 02 December 2022

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• Tomoya Matsumoto 9 &
• Ggombe Kasim Munyegera 10  

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Mobile phones have spread rapidly over the last two decades and are now being used even in rural areas of low-income countries, where the poor are concentrated. The number of mobile phone subscriptions per 100 people in the Sub-Saharan Africa region went from 1.7 in 2000 to 82.4 in 2018, meaning that mobile phones have spread to almost all regions and all social classes. The widespread use of mobile phones has made it possible to deliver voice and text information to remote areas at a low cost and has also triggered a variety of services using mobile phones as a platform. Particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, electronic payment services on mobile phones or ‘mobile money’ rapidly spread and changed people’s lives. This significant change involves not only the urban wealthy but also the rural farmers who previously had little access to financial services. This essay summarizes the findings from the authors’ recent research on the impact of the mobile revolution on the lives of rural residents in developing economies.

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“If you take away my phone, you take away my life...” Community Narratives about the Social Implications of Mobile phone Usage for Livelihood Security

Mobile phone use and livelihoods: qualitative evidence from some rural and urban areas in ghana.

Augustine Tanle & Albert Machistey Abane

Mobile Technology in Pacific Island Countries: the Potential for M-Government

1 introduction.

The African continent, where the world’s poorest countries are concentrated, has experienced the rapid spread of mobile phones over the past two decades. According to the World Development Indicators published by the World Bank, mobile phone subscriptions per 100 people in Sub-Saharan Africa have increased from 1.7 in 2000 to 93.6 in 2020. This significant change implies that mobile phones are rapidly penetrating almost every region and social class.

The widespread use of mobile phones has made it possible to deliver voice and text information cheaply, remotely, and instantly, and triggered the emergence of various services using mobile phones as a platform. In particular, mobile money services and electronic payment services using mobile phones have been spreading quickly in Sub-Saharan Africa and changing people’s lives. This change affects the wealthy in the cities and smallholder farmers in remote areas who have minimal access to traditional financial services. Mobile money enables many more rural residents in developing countries to remit and receive money, make deposits, and borrow cheaply and conveniently.

Most people in Sub-Saharan African countries have been left in financial exclusion, having very limited access to formal financial services provided by banks and other financial institutions. This is due to, among other constraints, high transaction costs, including fees for opening and maintaining accounts and the transportation cost to avail of the service. Under such circumstances, rural residents cannot save and invest effectively or borrow at low-interest rates. As a result, they have limited risk-coping measures and, hence, temporary shocks, such as bad weather or illness, often negatively and severely affect their livelihood and sometimes force them to sell their productive assets or discontinue educational investment for their children. Such disinvestment has a long-term negative influence on people’s welfare. Consequently, people lose the chance to escape from the poverty trap. So, financial exclusion is one of the causes of chronic poverty. However, the dissemination of mobile phones and the accompanying development of new information and financial services, the ‘mobile revolution,’ has dramatically changed the situation.

This essay will report on the recent development of mobile phone networks and related services and their consequences, mainly focusing on the authors’ empirical research in developing countries.

2 Rapid Dissemination of Mobile Phones in Africa

As researchers on rural economies in Sub-Saharan African countries, we have witnessed dramatic changes in the social and economic environment in the last two decades. The most significant change that we observed could be the development of mobile phone networks and the widespread use of mobile phones. Currently, mobile phone networks have covered almost all areas of human activity. Indeed, our research sites in rural communities in East Africa are mostly covered. We can communicate with the village leaders and other informants in advance to make an appointment or update the local information. In the past, there was no way to contact village leaders without visiting their villages, and we often failed to meet the persons of interest in the target villages. With mobile phones, fieldwork has become much easier and more efficient than before.

The authors have been working on a research project constructing longitudinal household survey data in three East African countries (Kenya, Uganda, and Ethiopia), known as the Research on Poverty, Environment, and Agricultural Technology (RePEAT) project. Footnote 1 The project focuses on rural residents in those three countries and covers the period of the mobile revolution in the last two decades. According to the RePEAT data, Kenya has the highest mobile phone ownership rate (i.e., the percentage of households where at least one family member owns a mobile phone), which increased from 13% in 2004 to 93% in 2012 and up to 99% in 2018 among our sample households in rural communities. In Uganda, the rate increased from 4% in 2003, 73% in 2012, and 95% in 2015. In Ethiopia, although it is a little behind the curve, the rate increased significantly from 0% in 2004 to 48% in 2014. The speed at which mobile phones have been spreading shows how great the benefits of mobile phones are.

3 Mobile Phone Penetration and Its Influence on Markets

Improved access to information infrastructure in wider areas, including rural villages, has led to significant changes in the patterns of agricultural production and marketing behavior of smallholder farmers. When information can be exchanged at a low cost, transaction costs for buying and selling agricultural products shrink, and producers in remote areas, who previously could not profit from trading, have started participating in market transactions, implying expansion of the market economy through the mobile phone network. Muto and Yamano ( 2009 ), a study using the RePEAT data of the Ugandan survey, found that farmers in remote areas, who had been engaged in almost subsistence farming, started selling their products through markets where the mobile network coverage expanded. They started selling more particularly perishable agricultural products, such as bananas. Through fieldwork, we also observed that small-scale farmers in Kenya have begun producing new commodity crops, such as fruits, vegetables, and fresh flowers, for urban supermarkets and exports, which would not be possible without reducing transaction costs because of mobile phone communication with traders.

The expansion of mobile networks broadens the market economy to more remote areas by reducing transaction costs and integrating neighboring regions’ fragmented local markets. When markets in the different regions are separated due to high transaction costs, commodity prices are determined by each region’s supply and demand conditions. However, as they are integrated, the supply and demand conditions in the larger integrated market determine commodity prices. Thus, market integration reduces price fluctuations. In addition, mismatches between supply and demand that cause unsold goods or shortages will be reduced. Footnote 2 Therefore, market integration is generally desirable for both producers and consumers because they lead to more efficient resource allocation and reduce the risk of price fluctuations.

Moreover, market integration through improved information flow by mobile network development is strengthened by improving logistics through transportation infrastructure. As the transportation infrastructure has considerably improved in many Sub-Saharan countries (Kiprono and Matsumoto 2018 ), the gain from the information infrastructure improvement would be more prominent. This dramatic change in markets has been happening in many Sub-Saharan African countries through the mobile revolution.

4 Variety of Services Using Mobile Phones as a Platform

Mobile phones are used as a tool for communication and as a receiver for various services. Public organizations have offered support, and private companies have offered commercial services using the short message service (SMS). In the health sector, several healthcare-related SMS services are provided. For instance, in Kenya, Malawi, and South Africa, those infected with HIV/AIDS get SMS messages indicating the type and timing of their retroviral therapy medication. The Babyl platform allows patients to register, book appointments, and receive prescriptions and examination results via mobile phone in Rwanda. Footnote 3 In agriculture, information service companies provide subscribers the price information of agricultural products in the market and agricultural technical guidance via SMS (Aker and Mbiti 2010 ).

Mobile money is the most revolutionary service among those using mobile phones as a platform. Footnote 4 This electronic payment service allows users to exchange money with individuals on mobile phones without having an account at a financial institution. Indeed, even those without a mobile money account can send and receive money via shared phones. Interestingly, Sub-Saharan Africa is the region where mobile money is most prevalent globally. In 2014, 12% of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa had a mobile money account, whereas only 2% did on the world average. Moreover, mobile money account owners in Sub-Saharan Africa have grown to 21% by 2017. Nearly half reported owning a mobile money account but no other financial institution account (Demirgü-Kunt et al. 2018 ). Among Sub-Saharan countries, Kenya is the most advanced in terms of mobile money users, where 73% of adults have a mobile money account. Uganda and Zimbabwe follow, where about 50% of adults had an account in 2017.

In Kenya, Safaricom, the biggest mobile network operator (MNO), launched its mobile money service in March 2007. M-Pesa (M stands for mobile, Pesa for money in Swahili) quickly spread nationwide as a means of depositing and transferring money, owing to its low transaction fees and the convenience of making monetary transactions with simple operations on mobile phones. Other MNOs followed suit, and there have been multiple companies offering mobile money in Kenya, although M-Pesa has been overwhelmingly dominant.

An account can be opened in a matter of minutes at M-Pesa outlet counters in town, free of charge, by bringing your ID card. Users can also make deposits and withdrawals there (or at automated teller machines or ATMs, but only in urban areas). Once users deposit a positive balance on their accounts, they can make money transfers easily and quickly by operating a simple app embedded in the memory of the mobile phone SIM (subscriber identity module) card. They have to enter the recipient’s phone number, the amount of money to be transferred, and the PIN. When completing a transaction, they immediately receive a confirmation SMS on their phone, indicating the amount sent and the remaining balance. This process is so secure that it is indeed rare to lose money either by the customer or the clerk at the outlet. Furthermore, users need to present their photo identification at the mobile money outlet counter to withdraw cash from their account. So even if their mobile phone is stolen or lost, there is little risk of money on the account being withdrawn by someone else. Thus, many people use their mobile money accounts to protect their money. For instance, long-distance travelers deposit cash into their mobile money account before departure to avoid carrying cash while traveling and reduce possible theft risks. In general, people have very high trust in mobile money services. From a gender perspective, mobile money often provides a safe platform for women to save their money privately without spousal interference. This increases their confidence to save and increases their access to financial services.

5 Spread of Mobile Money in Rural Economies

The rapid spread of mobile money in rural Kenya in a short period is due to the improved accessibility of such services through the enrichment of mobile communication and financial infrastructure and has a lot to do with the lifestyle of the rural residents. Many rural residents in Kenya are smallholder farmers engaging in settled agriculture. Since they own only small parcels for farming, it is common to send their family members, typically adult males, to towns and cities for earnings during off-farming seasons, while the remaining adults take care of their house and children. Footnote 5 For such migrant workers, mobile money has become indispensable as a means of remittances to families at home. Before the advent of mobile money services, the only ways to send money home were wire transfers handled at post offices or hand-carried by acquaintances or the migrants themselves when they returned home. Although there used to be high risks of remittance money being lost and stolen, such risks have been eliminated by mobile money services. High demand for a remittance measure and lack of alternative financial channels can explain the dramatically rapid dissemination of mobile money in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, while penetration has been modest or slow in other parts of the world. Indeed, the RePEAT survey in Kenya, representing the rural population, shows the rapid dissemination of mobile money; 43% of farm households had already used mobile money by 2009. The figure increased to 72% in 2012.

Although a step behind Kenya, Uganda also has experienced the rapid dissemination of mobile money since the first mobile money service was launched in March 2009. Several followers started mobile money services, but currently, two MNOs have dominantly operated the service due to severe market competition. Mobile money users in Uganda have been rapidly and steadily increasing, which has been observed even in rural areas. According to the RePEAT survey in Uganda, representing the rural population, the proportion of households using mobile money was almost zero in 2007, increasing to 38% in 2012, and 70% in 2015.

6 New Services Using Mobile Money

Mobile money has become more and more popular. It has begun to be used for many other purposes besides peer-to-peer (P2P) money transfer. For example, many schools in Kenya and Uganda have accepted mobile money payments for school fees. In the past, parents of students generally had to go to the school before each school term/semester to make payments in cash. While many elementary schools are located nearby, secondary schools are often located in distant locations. So, parents can save a considerable amount of time and money by making mobile phone payments. In addition, the accounting process has been eased for the schools by receiving the fees in mobile money, which indeed is associated with greater transparency. An increasing number of people have been paying their utility bills with mobile money.

New loan and insurance products using mobile money have been designed and developed. Some digital loan products are offered by MNOs partnered with commercial banks, sometimes called ‘mobile banking loans,’ while others are done by fintech firms that develop lending platforms (called ‘digital loan apps’ or ‘mobile loan apps’) connecting borrowers with lenders and distributing loans via mobile money. As individuals open and use mobile money accounts, MNOs accumulate their history of transaction records, creating credit information for individuals. Such accumulated information and its analysis enable individuals who lacked credit history and were excluded from formal credit markets in the past to access digital loan products. At the same time, these new financial products also create new business opportunities. According to the 2021 FinAccess household survey in Kenya, representing individuals aged 16 and above, 9.3% of the population uses the credit from mobile banking loans in 2021, which is the highest share among formal loans, whereas 3.4% use credit from savings and credit cooperative organizations (SACCOs, which are local, member-based financial organizations), and 2.9% use bank loans. Footnote 6

A new type of agricultural insurance called Kilimo Salama (meaning ‘safe farming’ in Swahili) was offered as a trial product to small-scale farmers in Kenya in 2011. It was indexed insurance, which covered input cost for crop production when excess rain or drought would occur, and used precipitation information from the nearest rainfall monitoring station to determine the payment of insurance claims. Thus, it did not need an inspection of the crop damage incurred by policyholders. Hence, it could be provided at a low insurance premium. In addition, the use of mobile money for claim payments further reduced costs. It made the insurance available even to small-scale farmers, who had been most vulnerable to weather risks and excluded from the market in the past. Index insurance products have drawn considerable attention since they cause less adverse selection and moral hazard than traditional insurance products. That is because insurance payments of index insurance are determined by the level of the objectively observed index rather than the actual damage reported by policyholders. Despite the high potential welfare gain for policyholders from the new insurance product reducing their weather risks, the trial has not been scaled out, as far as we know. Although the service provider did not report the details, low demand for the insurance product may be the reason for termination. Fukumori et al. ( 2022 ) examined the determinants of the product’s take-up and found that a better understanding of the insurance product enhances take-up. Low demand for the index insurance products has been reported in some cases. The basis risk, or weak correlation between the index and the actual loss incurred by policyholders, has attracted attention as a factor in lowering demand (Hill et al. 2019 ; Janzen and Carter 2019 ).

Mobile phone dissemination and the associated development of mobile financial services have significantly influenced aid organizations. They may fundamentally alter humanitarian and development assistance measures in the near future. For example, a pilot program in Niger distributed emergency relief funds using mobile money to residents in the areas suffering severe weather shock damage (Aker et al. 2016 ). Typically, relief supplies are procured in-kind outside, distributed to aid disaster areas, and provided to victims. There are several issues causing inefficiency in the implementation of such aid programs. First, the diversion or elite capture of relief supplies often occurs and reduces the amount of supplies delivered to victims. Second, the delivery of supplies is delayed. Third, relief supplies from the outside could crowd out local suppliers and distributors. However, the direct remittance of aid to the victims in the affected areas via mobile money will greatly reduce implementation costs and improve the efficiency of aid programs. In addition, potential crowding out could be averted by business opportunities created by local business entities to sell their commodities via the platform. Furthermore, the physical and mental burden on the victims will be reduced as they will not have to travel far and wait in long lines to receive relief supplies. There is also the advantage that each recipient can purchase the commodities they want according to their own circumstances.

More and more humanitarian fund transfer programs utilizing mobile money have been implemented recently for those severely suffering from natural disasters in Haiti, Afghan refugees in Pakistan, and refugees and returnees in Rwanda. The GSM Association (GSMA 2017) reported the outcome and lessons from such assistance programs and found that disbursing aid funds has the high potential to benefit recipients with timely payment, humanitarian organizations with increased traceability and efficient delivery, and mobile money providers with more customers. The full potential can be utilized where the mobile money ecosystem exists; that is, recipients have a mobile phone and a mobile money account, mobile money agents are located near recipients and keep enough liquidity, and merchants accept mobile money payments. Londoño-Vélez and Querubín ( 2022 ) evaluated a program distributing an unconditional cash transfer of about USD 19 to 1 million poor households during the COVID-19 pandemic and found that the program had a significantly positive but modest impact on the households’ well-being. Through the program, Columbia achieved rapid dissemination of mobile money. Benerjee et al. ( 2020 ) examined the effects of universal basic income in Kenya during the pandemic and found a significant but modest improvement in the well-being of the recipients.

Governments have also engaged in the development of mobile money payment systems proactively. Besides their policy and regulatory roles, government institutions in many African countries have increased the range of public services offered via digital platforms, including digitizing public services (e.g., birth certificates and national IDs) and payment via digital platforms like mobile money. Electronic declaration and digital payment of taxes in Uganda, Rwanda, and other countries are examples of such efforts by revenue authorities. As a result, taxpayers benefit from increased efficiency and reduced time and cost of tax payment. At the same time, the revenue authorities benefit from reduced incidence of tax evasion and delayed payments, and greater domestic resource mobilization.

6.1 Mobile Money’s Impact on People’s Livelihood in Developing Countries

Observing dramatic changes in the financial environment in developing countries after the emergence of mobile money services, a growing body of academic literature has evaluated the influence of access to mobile money on people’s livelihood in developing countries. In this section, we want to share the findings mainly from our research on mobile money and its impact on the livelihood of rural societies in developing countries.

6.2 Welfare Impact of Mobile Money

We investigated the impact of access to mobile money on household welfare measured by per capita consumption using the 2009 and 2012 waves of the RePEAT panel data in Uganda (Munyegera and Matsumoto 2016 ). The study covered a period from the onset of mobile money services in the country when almost nobody used mobile money to the transition stage when about 40% of households started using it. To identify the causal effect of access to mobile money, we utilized the panel structure of the household data tracking the same households during the period of rapid dissemination of mobile money in rural Uganda. Using a combination of household fixed effects, instrumental variables, and propensity score matching methods, we controlled for possible selection biases caused by unobserved factors that simultaneously affect mobile money adoption and outcome variables. Then, we found a positive and significant effect of mobile money access on real per capita consumption. The mechanism of this impact is the facilitation of remittances. Our preferred estimates indicated that households with at least one mobile money subscriber are 20 percentage points more likely to receive remittances from their members in towns and cities. As a result, the total annual value of the remittances they received was 33% higher than their non-user counterparts. We attribute this impact to reducing the transaction, transport, and time costs associated with mobile phone-based financial transactions. This study suggests significant welfare benefits of access to affordable financial services, which might go afield in reducing poverty and vulnerability, especially among the rural poor.

We also found that mobile money use increases the likelihood of saving and borrowing, besides receiving remittances (Munyegera and Matsumoto 2017 ). The corresponding amounts of each service are also significantly higher among mobile money user households relative to their non-user counterparts. The results imply that developing and enhancing access to and usage of pro-poor financial products could be a first step to achieving greater financial inclusion.

6.3 Healthcare Access and Mobile Money

Cash flow through mobile money eases the credit constraint on rural households and, hence, it is expected to positively affect several aspects of their lives, other than consumption. For example, many expectant mothers in developing countries do not receive adequate care during pregnancy due to financial constraints. If such hurdles in accessing healthcare can be overcome, it will reduce maternal and newborn mortality. Using the RePEAT data, Egami and Matsumoto ( 2020 ) looked at the impact of mobile money on access to health services, particularly maternal healthcare, in rural Uganda. They hypothesized that mobile money adoption would motivate rural Ugandan women to receive antenatal care. Utilizing a unique panel dataset covering the period of mobile money dissemination, they applied community- and mother-fixed effects models with heterogeneity analysis to examine the impact of mobile money adoption on access to maternal healthcare services. They found suggestive evidence that mobile money adoption positively affected the take-up of antenatal care. Heterogeneity analysis indicated that mobile money benefited geographically challenged households by easing their liquidity constraint as they faced a higher cost of traveling to distant health facilities. This study suggests that promoting financial inclusion by means of mobile money motivates women in rural and remote areas to make antenatal care visits.

6.4 Educational Investment and Mobile Money

The Uganda RePEAT data shows that health shocks are rampant in rural households and negatively correlate with economic activity and educational investment. For example, those who reported fever episodes and chronic diseases could not engage in income-earning activities for 7 days and 12 days, respectively, on average. They also experienced a significant income loss, which appeared to be associated with low educational investment among households with school-age children. Tabetando and Matsumoto ( 2020 ) examined the impact of mobile money adoption on rural households’ educational investment, particularly when they face health shocks. They found that mobile money user households mitigated the negative impact of health shocks on per-child educational expenses by having an increased remittance receipt. They also found that mobile money user households received remittances from more senders than non-user households. It implies that the user households are financially connected to a larger family and social network, which can function as insurance when facing unexpected adverse events.

7 Conclusion: Rural Development and Financial Inclusion Through Mobile Technology

In the COVID-19 pandemic, the significance of mobile money services has been reconfirmed, particularly in the regions where people have limited access to traditional financial services. Mobile money has been used to disburse aid funds by humanitarian organizations and remittances between family and friend networks, which mitigated the most harmful consequences of the negative shocks. The biggest potential beneficiaries of mobile technologies are rural residents in developing countries. A part of this potential has been realized, and we have had the chance to witness several aspects of the impressive change in rural societies in Kenya and Uganda. Although Sub-Saharan African countries still have a lot of poverty-related challenges, many of them have developed mobile communication and financial infrastructure, and more people have been involved in this dramatic change and have had better access to financial services. There is no doubt that private businesses will be booming corresponding to this mobile revolution, coupled with improvements in transportation infrastructure after the pandemic. We strongly believe that the light of hope is gradually shining on the future of Africa. It is fascinating and fortunate for us to have the opportunity to observe this dramatic change in the mobile and financial environment closely as a researcher during this period of major transformation in Africa. This was made possible by the generosity and constant guidance of Professor Otsuka. With the hope that the era of Africa will come, we would like to continue observing what is happening on the continent.

Recollections of Professor Keijiro Otsuka

I first met Professor Otsuka in 1996 when I began my master's program at Tokyo Metropolitan University and took his class. In his class, students prepared answers to end-of-chapter questions from a microeconomics textbook in English and submitted them every week, which the professor corrected. Being new to economics and writing in English, I almost cried as I completed the homework each time. Sometimes I couldn't submit by the deadline, so I sent it by fax. The submitted essays were always filled with red ink and many comments: “This sentence doesn't make sense,” “There is a leap in logic,” among many others. I remember how happy I was on the rare occasions when I received a “well done” comment. To my surprise, Professor Otsuka is still as passionate about his research as he was then. I was very fortunate to have met him and received training from him at the beginning of my academic career, which is the biggest treasure in my life.

− Tomoya Matsumoto.

Yamano et al. ( 2011 ) describe the details of the RePEAT project.

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Matsumoto, T., Munyegera, G.K. (2023). Mobile Revolution and Rural Development. In: Estudillo, J.P., Kijima, Y., Sonobe, T. (eds) Agricultural Development in Asia and Africa. Emerging-Economy State and International Policy Studies. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5542-6_17

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• VALLEY OF THE BOOM

Smartphones revolutionize our lives—but at what cost?

The computer in our hands can do astonishing things, but new studies show just how dramatically they’re distracting us.

Not long ago, as happens almost every day, I got a Skype call on my smartphone from my dad, who lives in Kolkata, India. My dad is 79 and doesn’t get out very much, having become increasingly housebound. On this day, I was traveling by train from Denmark to Sweden. Speaking to him, I held my phone up against the window, its camera lens facing out. We both took in the view of the Swedish countryside as the train pulled out from Malmo and sped toward Lund. For a brief while, it felt like we were traveling together.

For that moment of connection, and many others like it, my phone deserves my gratitude. But the same device has become a source of relentless distraction in my life, intruding upon my attention with frightening regularity and diminishing my in-person interactions with family and friends. On a visit to Kolkata to see my dad, I found myself reaching for my phone every few minutes in the middle of our conversation to scan my Facebook feed and see if a photo I’d recently posted had garnered any fresh likes. (It had! And comments, too!)

Over the past decade, smartphones have revolutionized our lives in ways that go well beyond how we communicate. Besides calling, texting, and emailing, more than two billion people around the world now use these devices to navigate, to book cab rides, to compare product reviews and prices, to follow the news, to watch movies, to listen to music, to play video games, to memorialize vacations, and, not least of all, to participate in social media.

It’s incontrovertible that smartphone technology has yielded many benefits for society, such as allowing millions of people who lack access to banks to conduct financial transactions, for instance, or enabling rescue workers in a disaster zone to pinpoint precisely where their help is needed most urgently. There are apps available for smartphone users to monitor how much they’re walking during the day and how well they’re sleeping at night. New applications of the technology emerge seemingly daily: Your smartphone can now help you stay on top of your children’s dental hygiene by tracking how long they’re brushing their teeth with their Bluetooth-enabled toothbrushes. (My wife and I decided that this was a bit much.)

These benefits, however, seem to have come at a high cost to our mental and social lives. The constant connectivity and access to information that smartphones offer have made the devices something of a drug for hundreds of millions of users. Scientists are just beginning to research this phenomenon, but their studies suggest that we are becomingly increasingly distracted, spending less time in the real world and being drawn more deeply into the virtual world.

The power they hold over us is glaringly evident in our everyday habits and behaviors. Remembering directions is a thing of the past—we habitually rely on our phones to get anywhere, even to destinations we’ve visited numerous times before. The most compulsive users among us keep our phones within clutching distance at all times, reaching for them even when we wake up in the middle of the night. At airports, on college campuses, at the mall, at the stoplight—at almost any public place you can think of—the most common sight of our time is that of people with bowed heads, looking intently at their phones. If you see someone in a café sipping coffee and staring out the window, it’s less likely that they’re enjoying a quiet moment and more likely that their device has simply run out of charge.

Our use of smartphones has effectively changed the geography of our minds, creating a distractive off-ramp for every thought we might have on our own. “What I’ve seen in the last six to eight years is a massive paradigm shift—much of the attentional resource that we devoted to our personal ecosystem has been shifted to what’s virtual,” says Larry Rosen, an emeritus professor of psychology at California State University in Dominguez Hills and co-author of The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a Hi-Tech World. “That means you are not attending to what’s in front of you. We see this in parenting—you are not focusing on your kids. You’re not even focusing on what you’re watching on television because you’re second-screening. It’s affecting every aspect of our lives, and sadly, I don’t think the pendulum has swung as far as it will go.”

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Researchers have begun documenting the impact of smartphones on our ability to focus. In one study, Adrian Ward, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, and his colleagues gave 800 participants two challenging mental tasks—solving a math problem while memorizing a random sequence of letters and selecting an image out of a few options to complete a visual pattern. Some participants were asked to leave their smartphones in another room while others were allowed to keep their smartphones in their pockets. Still other participants kept their smartphones on a desk in front of them. Although the phones played no role in the tasks, how accessible the phones were had an effect on how well the participants were able to perform them. Those who had left their phones in another room fared the best. Those with the phones placed in front of them did the worst. But even those who had tucked their phones in their pockets were found to have diminished cognitive capacity.

Researchers worry that addiction to smartphones could dull the ability of young users to read and comprehend texts, which in turn could have adverse impacts on their critical thinking. These concerns are based on the results of studies such as one conducted by psychologist Anne Mangen and her colleagues at the University of Stavanger in Norway. They divided 72 students in the 10th grade into two groups, asking one group to read two texts on paper and the other to read the same texts as PDFs on a screen. The print readers did much better on a reading comprehension test than the digital readers.

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Another study, conducted at the University of British Columbia, lends support to what many of us have concluded from first-hand experience: Smartphone use can adversely affect social interactions in the real world. The researchers, led by Ryan Dwyer, a doctoral student in psychology, asked more than 300 participants to have a meal at a restaurant with friends or family, instructing some to keep their phones on the table and others to put their phones away. Those who had their phones in front of them reported feeling more distracted during the conversation and enjoyed the meal less than the others.

“When people had access to their phones, they were also more bored, which is not what we were expecting,” Dwyer says. Having your phone on the table while dining, he adds, is “probably not going to ruin your meal, but it could chip away at your enjoyment.” The toll exacted by this phenomenon on close family relationships is easy to extrapolate.

The reason why it’s become so hard for us to set aside our phones, even at mealtimes, isn’t hard to understand. “It’s well known that if you want to keep a person dialed into something, give them a reward at variable times,” explains Ethan Kross, a psychologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “Turns out, that’s exactly what email or social media does—you don’t know when you’ll get another like or receive your next email, and so we keep checking.”

Our compulsivity seems to be getting worse, according to a study by Rosen and his colleagues in which they’ve been keeping track of smartphone use by high school students and young adults. Using apps that count the number of times a phone gets unlocked, the researchers found that participants had gone from unlocking their phones about 56 times a day in 2016 to 73 times a day in 2018. “That’s a huge increase,” Rosen says.

Some of the blame lies with notifications, which can be turned off. Another factor is “the anxieties that are in your head,” Rosen says, and these too can be addressed with efforts like mindfulness and meditation. A third and more insidious factor, according to Rosen, is the way technology companies have “carefully orchestrated their apps and their websites to get your eyeballs there, to keep them there and to keep them coming back.”

Responding to these criticisms, phone makers have developed apps to help users monitor their phone screen time. But it’s unclear if apps like Apple’s Screen Time and Google Android’s Digital Well Being will help users curtail the time they spend on their phones. In a study of high school seniors, Rosen and his team found that the study participants did check screen time monitoring apps occasionally and did learn that they’d been spending more time on their phones than they’d thought. But they determined that about half of them made no changes to their behavior. (The researchers are following up to find out what changes the others made.)

Rosen admits to being hooked himself. As a news junkie, he’s constantly opening up Apple News on his phone. “Most of the time, there’s nothing new, but every once in a while, a new story shows up, giving me a positive reinforcement to do it more often,” he says.

Learning to live with the technology without surrendering to it may be one of the biggest challenges we face in the digital era. “We are playing catch-up,” says Kross, who describes the experiential universe opened up by smartphones as a new ecosystem that we’re still adapting to. “There are helpful or harmful ways of navigating the offline world, and the same is true of the digital world.”

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Essay on Mobile Phone: 100 Words, 300 Words, 500 Words

• Updated on  
• Feb 21, 2024

Mobile Phones are portable electronic devices used to make calls, browse the internet, click pictures, and do several other tasks. However, the mobile phones discovered in the early 1970s were quite different from the compact and slim devices we use today. Cell phones were invented by John F. Mitchell and Martin Cooper of Motorola in 1973.

As modern humans, we all use mobile phones for our day-to-day functioning. At academic and higher education levels, students are given the task of writing an essay on mobile phones. An essay on mobile phones requires a comprehensive and detailed study of their history, major developments and the purposes it serve. In this article, we have provided essays on mobile phones for class 6,7,8.9, 10, and 12th standard students. Students can refer to these sample essays on mobile phones to write their own. Keep reading to find out essays on mobile phones and some fun facts about the device.

This Blog Includes:

Sample essay on mobile phone (100 words), sample essay on mobile phone (300 words), sample essay on mobile phone (500 words), essay on mobile phone: 5+ facts about smartphones.

Also Read: The Beginner’s Guide to Writing an Essay

Also Read: Essay on Importance of the Internet

Here we have listed some of the interesting facts about smartphones. These facts can be added to the ‘essay on mobile phones’ to make it more interesting. Below are the 5 interesting facts about smartphones:

• The most expensive smartphone in the world is the Falcon Supernova iPhone 6 Pink Diamond. It is worth  $48.5 million.
• The cheapest mobile phone in the world is the Freedom 251. It just cost INR 251.
• Apple is the world’s most popular smartphone
• The first phone greeting was “Ahoy-hoy, who’s calling please?” 
• The first smartphone was invented by IBM. It was released by IBM in 1994. The original screen name of the 1st smartphone was “Simon.” 
• The first text message in the world was ‘Merry Christmas’

Also Read: Holi Essay: Free Sample Essays 100 To 500 Words In English

A mobile phone system gets its name from diving the service into small cells. Each of these cells has a base station with a useful range in the order of a kilometre/mile.

Mobile phones have become extremely important due to the ease of communication it has brought about. Moreover, it can perform several major tasks easily and effectively. For example, a calculator. Aside from this mobile phones can help a user connect to the internet, and use social media applications, and other applications. Mobile phones can even assist in online payment. 

The full form or the meaning of a Moble is Modified, Operation, Byte, Integration, Limited, Energy”. John F. Mitchell and Martin Cooper of Motorola discovered the device in 1973. An essay on mobile phones can include the mobile phone full form.

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Mobile phones have become an indispensable part of our lifestyle. There are several advantages and disadvantages of having a smartphone. However, the pros outweigh the cons. A mobile phone essay can be written by including both the advantages and disadvantages. To discover more articles like this one, consult the study abroad expert at Leverage Edu.

Blessy George

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Essay on Mobile Phone Revolution In Our Life

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This essay talks about Mobile Phone, How its has revolutionized our Personal life, Professional Life and Social Life, Few Cons of Mobile Phone. This essay is written in Simple English and in easy to understand words for children and students.

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Essay on Mobile Phone Revolution For Students

Mobile phones have become an indispensable part of our lives. It is hard to imagine a life without a mobile phone. In today’s world, mobile phones play a very important role in our daily lives. They are not just used for making and receiving calls but also for various other purposes such as sending text messages, taking pictures, listening to music, surfing the internet etc.

Mobile Phone Revolution, Meaning & Concept

A mobile phone (also known as a wireless phone, cell phone, or cellular telephone) is a small portable radio telephone. The mobile phone can be used to communicate over long distances without wires. It works by communicating with a nearby base station (also called a “cell site”) which connects it to the main phone network.

How Mobile Phones have Revolutionized our Personal Life?

Mobile phones have revolutionized the way we live. They have become an essential part of our lives. We use them to communicate with our loved ones, stay connected with our friends and family, and access the internet on the go.

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In the past, we had to rely on landline phones and pay phones to stay connected with our loved ones. But now, with mobile phones, we can call or text anyone from anywhere in the world. We can also use mobile apps to stay connected with our friends and family on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.

Mobile phones have also made it easier for us to access the internet. We can use mobile apps to browse the web, check our email, and stay up-to-date with the latest news.

How Mobile Phones have Revolutionized our Professional Life?

Mobile phones have also revolutionized the way we work. They have made it easier for us to stay connected with our colleagues and clients. We can use mobile apps to collaborate on projects, share files, and stay up-to-date with the latest industry news.

Mobile phones have also made it easier for us to access work documents and files while we are on the go. We can use mobile apps to view and edit documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

How Mobile Phones have Revolutionized our Social Life?

Mobile phones have also revolutionized the way we socialize. They have made it easier for us to stay connected with our friends and meet new people. We can use mobile apps to connect with our friends on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.

We can also use mobile apps to meet new people. We can use dating apps like Tinder and Bumble to find potential dates, and we can use social networking apps like Meetup to find new friends with similar interests.

Cons of Mobile Phones

While mobile phones have many benefits, there are also some drawbacks. Mobile phones can be distracting, and they can also be a security risk.

Distraction:

Mobile phones can be distracting, especially when we are trying to focus on something else. For example, if we are trying to work on a project, we may be tempted to check our phone for new emails or notifications. Or if we are trying to have a conversation with someone, we may be tempted to check our phone for new text messages or phone calls.

Security Risk:

Mobile phones can also be a security risk. If we lose our phone, anyone who finds it will have access to our personal information, including our contacts, email, and social media accounts. And if our phone is stolen, the thief will have access to all of our personal information.

So, while mobile phones have many benefits, we should be aware of the distractions and security risks they can pose.

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• / Technology

The Mobile Revolution

By: Artur   •  Essay  •  1,522 Words  •  February 18, 2010  •  1,411 Views

Join now to read essay The Mobile Revolution

Rakesh Mohan Hallen

By March 2004 the total number of cell phone users in India exceeded 3 crores. Experts call it a mobile revolution. People from all walks of life, of all ages use them. They carry it in their hands, pockets or purses. One can find advertisements related to cell phones anywhere: roads, newspapers, and television. Theoretically one can contact a person carrying a mobile (cell phone) anywhere, anytime.

But few are aware of the technology that makes it possible. It is not very difficult to become aware of its nitty-gritties.

How it works

To use a cell phone one needs a handset. The handset of a cell phone, as you might have seen, has a small screen at one end and a panel of buttons below it. Some handsets have a small antenna that is protruding out from its, but it is not universal. Some modern handsets are foldable so that when not in use the panel of buttons is not visible, these handsets have a larger screen that can display colour pictures also.

The essential component of the technology that make cell phone possible are networks of a large number of radio transmitters/receivers. Each cell phone company has a network of this kind that is controlled in each city/state by its central office known as MTSO (Mobile Telephone Switching Office) . You know that our body is made up of many cells. These networks are also cellular akin to the body of any animal. The area covered by a cell phone company, a city or a state, for its services is divided into zones that are called its cells. Thus the network of a cellular company is made up of many such cells. Each of these cells has a moderately sized radio transmitter/receiver and a microprocessor based instrument somewhat like a computer, located at a place known as its base station. Base stations can communicate with each other. They can easily located in a town/city because of the prominent size of their antenna above some buildings.

A cell phone handset is also a low power radio transmitter/receiver. It can transmit as well as receive electromagnetic waves from its closest base station when it is powered on.

As soon as one turns on a cell phone handset it listens for SID (System Identification Code - a unique 5-digit number that is assigned to each carrier by the central authority say TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) and is programmed into each handset when it is activated by a company.) on the control channel. The control channel is a special frequency that the phone and base station use to talk to one another about things like call set-up and channel changing. If the phone cannot find any control channels to listen to, it knows it is out of range and displays a "no service" message. The SID helps a cell phone company to identify cell phone handsets registered with it that are powered ON.

It also transmits a signal that includes the ESN to the base station of its parent company every few seconds. The computers attached to these transmitters/receivers maintain latest information about all the handsets distributed/registered by the parent company. This information at each base station is constantly updated. Thus base station of each cell knows the location of every powered on handset at any instance of time, through the codes SID and ESN.

When one dials a number on a handset signals are first converted into electricity and then into electromagnetic waves that are transmitted by it. The radio receiver of the cell in which handset is located at that time receives this signal. It is in then communicated to its computer to find the nature of the addressed party. If it is addressed to another cell phone serviced by the parent company, it finds out the location of the addressed handset and transmits signals to that base station, which in turn alerts the handset about the incoming call.

In case the call is addressed to a cell phone serviced by another company or to a landline telephone the cell directs the call into relevant network, which then directs the call in a similar fashion.

If a handset moves toward the edge of a cell, the cell's base station senses that the strength of the signals from that handset is diminishing. Meanwhile, the base station in the cell towards which it is moving (because is also listening and measuring signal strength on all frequencies) sees that the strength of radio waves from it is increasing. The two base stations coordinate with each other through the MTSO, and at some point, the handset gets a signal on a control channel telling it to change frequencies. Thus the handset is switched to the new cell.

Essay on Mobile Phone for Students and Children

500+ words essay on mobile phone.

Essay on Mobile Phone: Mobile Phone is often also called “cellular phone”. It is a device mainly used for a voice call. Presently technological advancements have made our life easy. Today, with the help of a mobile phone we can easily talk or video chat with anyone across the globe by just moving our fingers. Today mobile phones are available in various shapes and sizes, having different technical specifications and are used for a number of purposes like – voice calling, video chatting, text messaging or SMS, multimedia messaging, internet browsing, email, video games, and photography. Hence it is called a ‘Smart Phone’. Like every device, the mobile phone also has its pros and cons which we shall discuss now.

Advantages of Mobile Phone

1) Keeps us connected

Now we can be connected to our friends, relatives at any time we want through many apps. Now we can talk video chat with whoever we want, by just operating your mobile phone or smartphone. Apart from this mobile also keeps us updated about the whole world.

2) Day to Day Communicating

Today mobiles phone has made our life so easy for daily life activities. Today, one can assess the live traffic situation on mobile phone and take appropriate decisions to reach on time. Along with it the weather updates, booking a cab and many more.

3) Entertainment for All

With the improvement of mobile technology, the whole entertainment world is now under one roof. Whenever we get bored with routine work or during the breaks, we can listen to music, watch movies, our favorite shows or just watch the video of one’s favorite song.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

4) Managing Office Work

These days mobiles are used for many types of official work From meeting schedules, sending and receiving documents, giving presentations, alarms, job applications, etc. Mobile phones have become an essential device for every working people

5) Mobile Banking

Nowadays mobiles are even used as a wallet for making payments. Money could be transferred almost instantly to friends, relatives or others by using mobile baking in the smartphone. Also, one can easily access his/her account details and know past transactions. So it saves a lot of time and also hassle-free.

Disadvantages of Mobile Phones

1)  Wasting Time

Now day’s people have become addicted to mobiles. Even when we don’t need to mobile we surf the net, play games making a real addict. As mobile phones became smarter, people became dumber.

2) Making Us Non- communicable

Wide usage of mobiles has resulted in less meet and talk more. Now people don’t meet physically rather chat or comment on social media.

3) Loss of Privacy

It is a major concern now of losing one’s privacy because of much mobile usage. Today anyone could easily access the information like where you live, your friends and family, what is your occupation, where is your house, etc; by just easily browsing through your social media account.

4) Money Wastage

As the usefulness of mobiles has increased so their costing. Today people are spending a lot amount of money on buying smartphones, which could rather be spent on more useful things like education, or other useful things in our life.

A mobile phone could both be positive and negative; depending on how a user uses it. As mobiles have become a part of our life so we should use it in a proper way, carefully for our better hassle-free life rather using it improperly and making it a virus in life.

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Essay, Paragraph or Speech on “Mobile Phone Revolution” Complete Essay, Speech for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Mobile Phone Revolution

Like the computer revolution, the cellphone or the mobile is creating a major revolution across the country. What started as ripple is today emerging as a giant wave bringing about virtual socio-economic change in the country. Due to its ubiquitous use the sea change is visible in every sphere of human life. In matrimonial markets, sting operations and shockingly enough in the dangerous field of terrorism, mobile is being used as a tool. In the initial stage, the possession of cellphone was the privilege of a few people but today major mobile companies are vying with one another for the mobile market. Now mobile has become affordable for anyone. The changes in a span of less than a decade have been so dramatic that many have come to realise that they can’t contemplate a life without favourite mobile.

The period 2002-2005 were a defining year for the mobile services business. Not only did the mobile services add some 775 million subscribers but also registered 50.53% growth in revenues. According to the report of National Telecom Survey the communication services market in India was worth Rs. 50,358 crore in 2002-2003. This is a growth of 5-11 percent over the 2001-02 fiscal year when the market size was Rs. 47,908 crore. The services covered in the survey include the basic services, the cellular services, national and international long distance and internet services. As per the report while basic services contributed 57% to the total services industry size of Rs. 50,538 crore last year, the fast growing cellular services came second with 16%. The rapidly growing mobile subscription base has now crossed more than 20 million.

The cellular revolution has now reached grassroots. In a few cities like Mumbai and Ahmedabad you don’t have to search for auto rickshaws. Some savvy drivers wait for the customers to dial on their mobile. After incoming calls became free a host of rickshaw drivers, carpenters and plumbers are using services. While corporate majors are driving up cellphone revenues in urban pockets, mobile phones are changing the way small entrepreneurs and farmers do business in the interiors of the country. The disabled patient visiting cancer center uses his cellphone to call the chauffeur (who too possess a mobile) from the distant parking lot. On another occasion the company driver standing in queue at the busy reservation counter of the the Eranakulam South Railway station informs his GM’s madam at home about the late running of a train for the reservation of a seat in which he was asked to book. He takes an on the spot decision on alternatives while still at the queue.

Cellphone companies are now trying to rope in more customers by providing special services and even those seeking life partners use mobile. Many companies are targeting specific user communities even in the country-side for you don’t have companies everywhere. In Kerala BPL was the first mobile company to convince the fishermen to go mobile. Of the six lakhs cellphone subscribers in Kerala 12% are fishermen who use their phones while at sea to ascertain the best available rates for their catch at the several markets on the Kerala coast. An empty basket of your favourite fish in the market need not disappoint you. The vendor would contact his man on the sea and if his reply is favourable, the seller will ask you to contact him again.

Idea Cellular also provides special schemes for fishermen across the coastal regions of Gujrat, Maharashtra and Goa. They provide coverage up to 15 km into the sea. This allows fisherman to keep in touch with the mainland. In the north, Airtel helps farmers sell grains and vegetables in Punjab and Haryana. Airtel organization provide the latest rates at the five main markets at Jalandhar, Amritsar, Patiala, Ludhiana and Bhatinda.

In recent times over Rs. 500 crore money spinner advertisement market has caught the fancy of the cell operators. Mobile First–the consortium of Cellular Operators—BPL, Mobile Escotel, RPH cellular and spice cellular was launched in 2003. It is India’s first matrimonial service on mobile telephones.

The scheme enables the Mobile First subscribers to find prospective life partners either for themselves or their near or dear ones through mobile telephones. The three million pan Indian subscribers of Mobile First in 700 urban centres would be able to subscribe to this facility by using the SMS.

It is indeed a godsend when an individual could search for a life partner with greater ease and speed and that too at low cost option to place a matrimonial advertisement with the reach extending across almost all the states and metros.

Who will not be tired in the big cities standing in long queues for paying the electricity bills and water bills or for getting cinema tickets. It is the time when the tempers run high and consumers have to wait patiently to get their turn. If some elements try to jump the queue a hell breaks loose. But some cellular service providers are prepared to come to the rescue of these consumers. They provide personnel who come to door step to collect the bill and make the payment or even deliver movie tickets, You can also call the service providers or send SMS to arrange for electricians or plumbers. Even a doctor can quickly be contacted. Crucial services like blood banks and ambulances can also be sought.

This kind of service is not a source of revenue for the operators but it promotes goodwill for them.

Service providers also allow for payment of cellphone bills electronically. Citi bank Suvidha or Citibank Credit Card holders who are also Airtel subscriber can pay over phone by calling the banks through payment at ATMs or via Internet. Standard Chartered Banks Credit Card consumers can pay cellphone bills through credit card. ICICI and HDFC account holders can pay up over the Net. Hutch, with its service Hutch Help has been trying to help customers get in touch with chemists and enable women customers to access plumbers and electricians for nominal pay of Rs. 7. Airtel enables servicing of SSLC or CBSE exam results by sending an SMS.

Revenues from mobile advertising and marketing exceeded 2 billion dollar over the next years during. Mobile advertising is expected to surpass online advertising services. It is claimed that by 2008 more people would access information on hand held mobile (phones). There could be substantial increase in revenues by promoting mobile commerce in camera.

70% of the country’s population below 30 years category accounts for 25% of the current subscriber. It is only natural for major mobile companies to target the new schemes for the youth.

Delhi government has restricted the use of mobile while driving simply because it could create conditions for accidents. But doctors in Delhi are pressing the Delhi Government to waive this rule just because according to DMA (Delhi Medical Association) doctors have to attend to emergency calls from their patients. And if they ignore their calls while driving, it amounts to injustice to the patients. At present, the traffic police can slap a fine of Rs. 1000 if they find you using the mobile while driving.

It is indeed a matter of pride that an Indian engineer, Mr. Arun Sarin—a graduate from the IIT Kharagphur is the Chief Executive of the world’s biggest mobile phone, company, the $ 100 million UK based Vodaphone. This has made Arun Britains most powerful businessmen Mr. Sarin has been director of Cisco System, the networking switching giant. He was also the CEO of Vodaphone’s US and Asia Pacific Operations and chief operating officer of Airtouch, a US based wireless provider. Born in India, he did BTech of IIT Kharagphur and obtained both an MS and MBA from the University of California at Barkeley in 1978.

Like any other scientific or technological device the mobile is also used for destructive purposes. You can’t blame the mobile if the user uses it for committing crimes against humanity. The notorious terrorist Amrozi bin Nurhasym of Indonesia denoted his car bomb attacks in Indonesia in October 2002 by using mobile phone.

Even the five year old in England use mobile phone promoting worries about their health and safety. A new research by the British Government has warned young children using mobile phone because of the greater risk of radio waves penetrating their thinner skulls. Primary school’s children in UK are the fastest growing market for mobile phones with more than 400000 owing a handset. One in nine children aged five to nine have a mobile which is double the number two years ago.

Cellphones operators have mounted an aggressive market strategy to woo potential customers and their campaigns are yielding rich dividends. Indian society is in a flux and people of all categories are trying to get mobile telephones because they need them. They are no longer going in for it for the heck of it. For most the mobile has added colour and convenience to their daily life.

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St Petersburg: the city of three revolutions

25 October 2017 By Owen Hatherley Essays

Instigated by an unequal and divided populace, St Petersburg was pivotal in a succession of momentous revolutionary upheavals 

The city variously known through history as St Petersburg, Petrograd or Leningrad used to be called ‘the Cradle of Three Revolutions’. It was central to a succession of massive upheavals: the eventually failed Empire-wide uprising of 1905, the February Revolution of 1917 that overthrew the Tsar, and the October Revolution of the same year that began an experiment in total social transformation. Over recent decades, it has become something of a forgotten city, though it is the fourth largest metropolis in Europe, after Moscow, Istanbul and London. Its 18th-century canal-side streets look to the untrained eye like a tougher Copenhagen, yet rather than being lined by bicycles, they’re choked with traffic. A Petersburg ‘clan’ dominates Russian politics, but the city seems to have benefited little in terms of investment. Its piercing beauty coexists with a sharp carelessness.

Supporters of the provisional government inside the Winter Palace in November 1917. Photograph courtesy of World History Archive / Alamy

Aside from its revolutions, Petersburg is best known for a beauty that predates the uprisings. The place that erupted three times in strikes, factory occupations and insurrections was not defined by perfectly calculated Enlightenment classicism, but by 19th-century suburbs of tall, crowded tenements, wooden slums, red brick mills and heavy metal engineering works. Petersburg’s industry was monolithic, defined by a few enormous complexes employing thousands of people, staffed by workers whose grandparents were serfs. This made it an ideal city of what Bolshevik theorists called ‘uneven and combined development’. Yet Petersburg is extremely ‘even’ in its planned structure. A centre like an ideal Renaissance town plan come to life is surrounded successively by equally homogeneous quarters of the 19th century, the avant-garde 1920s, the Stalinist 1930s to ’50s, the prefabricated 1960s to ’80s. It is these last decades where new development is concentrated, because of the most influential Soviet legacy – the historical preservation of the entire city centre, which is sometimes circumvented, but never quite defeated, by property developers and their friends in government. Instead, developers cram ultra-high-density complexes of Postmodernist ‘luxury’ flats – quickly built by brutally treated Central Asian migrant workers – into tight plots in former industrial districts. It is an unpleasant side effect of conservation that the city government seems prepared to accept.

Rexfeatures 9051286a

Winter Palace, Palace Square. The events of 1917 are largely ignored by the Kremlin in this centenary year. Photograph by AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky, courtesy of Rex/Shutterstock

There are many traces of the revolution in the centre if you know where to find them. The cruiser Aurora , a volley from which was the signal for insurrection in October 1917, still stands on the river Neva, and was recently restored, although it currently downplays its revolutionary use. Plaques are sometimes to be found on the buildings occupied by the various revolutionary governments, such as the Tauride Palace or the Smolny Institute. There are monuments, like the exceptionally moving Field of Mars, a burial ground for victims of the February Revolution, later completed with poetic inscriptions by the Bolshevik Commissar of Enlightenment, Anatoly Lunacharsky. There are the streets and squares where protest and insurrection happened. Nevsky Prospect, where demonstrators were shot in the suppression of the violent protests of July 1917. The unforgettable dream-space of Palace Square, where the Winter Palace was stormed, and where the storming would be re-enacted by avant-garde theatre groups and Constructivist film directors. 

The cruiser Aurora signalled insurrection in October 1917. Photograph courtesy of Interfoto / Alamy

The most interesting and enduring legacy is more invisible – the Kommunalka . This hugely unequal and divided city’s apartments were audited and split up during the bloody Civil War that followed the Bolshevik seizure of power, with one result being extreme subdivision – several families in one huge, high-ceilinged imperial flat. Few outside Russia realise that many of the opulent apartment blocks in the centre are actually still Kommunalki, with a tangle of doorbell switches to each door. This has two results today. The neglect of these lush tenements is obvious, but inner-city districts have mostly not been fully gentrified, as the complexity of who owns what often deters investors. Defying conservation laws, some developers find it easier to just knock down and build replicas instead, dispersing the residents and owners in one fell swoop rather than negotiating with them. It’s hardly utopian, but the persistence of the Kommunalka is nonetheless a definite revolutionary legacy in 2017.

Profusion of doorbells on the main door of a Kommunalka . Photograph by Sergey Kozmin Photography 

The earliest legacy in terms of new space is Narvskaya Zastava, ‘the Narva district’, which stretches roughly from the Narva Gate, a flamboyant victory arch for the Napoleonic Wars, to the Putilov engineering works, the largest and most important factory in 1917, whose support was crucial for the Bolshevik insurrection of October. This was one of the first districts to have been built in the USSR – given that the Putilov workers began to rebel against Bolshevik statism as early as 1920, satisfying their demands for a better quality of life was important for the revolutionary regime’s legitimacy. The earliest part, from 1926, is Tractor Street, designed by Aleksandr Gegello, Aleksandr Nikolsky and Grigory Simonov, a very attractive Neoclassical estate that subtly distorts the limpid classicism that defines St Petersburg, with half-arches and unexpected vistas. On the oversized Square of Strikes, a collection of public buildings face each other. Some – like Noi Trotsky’s early 1930s Town Hall, and ASNOVA architects’ dramatic Factory Kitchen – are ambitiously Constructivist, with asymmetrical towers and ribbon windows, while others, such as the 10th Anniversary School and the Gorky Palace of Culture (both 1927), are in a Perret-like Rationalist style. Few are in a good state of repair, and the townscape is marred by the hideous mirrorglass-Classical 1812 Shopping Centre, but a few years ago, a Walter Benjamin-like tour of the district formed the basis of a project by the contemporary avant-garde group Chto Delat (What is To Be Done?), which was published as an issue of their intriguing newspaper. Square of Strikes was also the setting for their film Angry Sandwich People , where the text of a Brecht poem about the fading of revolutionary hope is carried on sandwich boards by a group of Petersburgers.

A room shared by a family of three and a dog in a Kommunalka, or communal apartment. Photograph by Sergey Kozmin Photography

If this is the only entire district in the city where you can still just about feel the pulse of post-revolutionary ambition, there are Constructivist factory kitchens and workers’ clubs dotted around the inner suburbs. In Vasilevsky Island, next to surviving shipyards and docks, there is a factory with an abstracted tower by Iakov Chernikhov, best known for his 1933 book Architectural Fantasies; a couple of miles north is Erich Mendelsohn’s Red Banner Textile Factory, an Expressionist battleship marooned among disused 19th-century mills and warehouses. These two buildings are among the monuments of an era when the USSR was, briefly, the centre of European Modernism; but most of the buildings that directly invoke the revolution in imagery and rhetoric are from the Stalinist years. The city’s palatial Metro is studded with bronze, steel, porphyry and glass monuments to unnamed insurgents and their named leaders. It works almost as a narrative, going from Lenin speaking to workers on a giant relief in the entrance to Narvskaya, to the central Uprising Square, where state power is seized in ceramic medallions. A statue of Lenin commands the classic totalitarian urbanism of the Moskovsky (Moscow) District, with its huge squares and castellated apartment buildings for the Soviet elite. 

With exceptions, such as Catriona Kelly’s admirable Shadows of the Past, St Petersburg after the end of the Second World War – during which the city was blockaded and starved nearly to death – is ignored in histories. It was only really between the ’60s and ’80s that the housing problem inherited in 1917 was seriously solved, with the mass building of prefabricated housing – most of the results are nondescript, save the memorable Brutalist enfilades that line the canals in the north of Vasilievsky Island. Perestroika Leningrad saw a late artistic flowering as a city of the post-punk avant-garde, via musicians such as Sergey Kuryokhin and Viktor Tsoi. It is also the home of Vladimir Putin, and his coterie of former secret servicemen. Its city government has been proudly reactionary – the recent law against ‘homosexual propaganda’ was first tested out in St Petersburg. The vote to rename the city in 1991 was narrow, and many institutions just had their names changed rather than being abolished. One such was the Museum of the Revolution, which became the Museum of Political History.

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Kirovsky, former Putilovsky factory, site of workers’ strike, taken in 1917.   Photograph by AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky, courtesy of Rex / Shutterstock

This was once Ksheshinskaya’s Palace, built for a ballerina, to the designs of Aleksandr Von Gogen in 1904. The Palace was a sprawling home for one fortunate person, a short walk from the overcrowded tenements of the proletarian Vyborg district. In 1917, the Bolsheviks requisitioned it as their HQ; in the ’50s, it became a museum. When I visited in 2010, you still had to wear plastic slippers and photos were strictly forbidden. The collection of revolutionary memorabilia had, at some point in the ’90s, been supplied with new captions telling you how awful the Bolsheviks really were. Now, these rooms coexist with a more nuanced but still schizophrenic depiction of revolutionary events, after a recent expansion and restoration. One room will tell you about Ksheshinskaya, another replicates the Bolshevik Central Committee’s offices, another gives a potted history of Soviet housing in the city. Most pertinent of all is a permanent exhibition on the Duma, the rigged parliament that Tsar Nicholas II conceded after the first of the ‘three revolutions’ in 1905. It is aptly placed alongside the equally powerless current Russian parliament of the same name. You might miss the most important thing – the expropriation of the rich, their luxuries transformed into a base for plotting out the parameters of a new and better kind of society. The streets of Petersburg have abundant evidence of how that ended up; but they also show why people believed it possible.

October 2017

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St Petersburg: city of revolution turns itself around – again

This year all eyes have been on what happened in Russia’s cultural capital 100 years ago, but we ask local artists and musicians for the lowdown on its best 21st-century clubs and arts venues

“Y ou won’t find anything like this in Moscow,” Kolya Dubinko, a St Petersburg native, insists. We’re sitting on a wooden bench next to an old sailing boat outside newly opened bar/club Machty (Masts). The venue – which on this particular evening is hosting a selection of techno DJs and producers on Moscow label Gost Zvuk Records – occupies a former factory known as Priboi that once produced radio-electronics. It’s in a relatively secluded spot at the far end ofVasilievsky Island, one of the oldest parts of the city, on the Shkiperskiy canal. Machty simultaneously reflects the city’s intimate relationship with water (St Petersburg has 93 rivers and canals and 800 bridges), its industrial Soviet past and its 18th-century baroque architecture. Kolya ushers me through a small gate that leads to the canalembankment and I’m hit by biting wind from the Gulf of Finland, laced with smells of fish and engine oil.

St Petersburg has endured its fair share of suffering: from its construction in the early 18th century, which cost the lives of thousands of serfs, to its siege during the second world war, then the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing chaos, when it reverted to being called St Petersburg, having been Leningrad for the duration of Soviet rule. All this change has left its mark on the city.

In 2017, St Petersburg is most often rememberedfor providing the historical backdrop to one of the most significant events of the 20th century: the Russian Revolution. One hundred years on, a young generation is making its mark on the city’s nightlife, music, food and art scenes. I’ve spent a lot of time in St Petersburg over the past six years and – in the year in which Russia celebrates a century since the revolution – I’m eager to see the latest developments in the country’s “cultural capital” (before another punishing winter sets in).

Clubs and music venues

A 20-minute walk from Machty, another newly opened venue embodies the city’s contrasts: Port Sevkabel . Also on the site of a former factory (a 19th-century one this time) it has a red-brick facade and its extensivealleys, courtyards and towering chimney – while not yet entirely open – have already hosted a session with live-stream DJ platform Boiler Room, a concert with UK band Hidden Orchestra, exhibitions by local artists and a round-table discussion featuring Troy Conrad Therrien, a curator at the Guggenheim in New York. Restaurants, cafes, museums, hostels and festivals are in the pipeline, too.

The nightlife scene is bolstered by spaces such as Club Mosaique – in a courtyard on Konyushennaya Square, a stone tunnel-like structure packed with partygoers at weekends, hosting local and foreign DJ talent – and newer club Kuznya , in the city’s New Holland Island, an 18th-century manmade island turned outdoor park and cultural centre. New Holland has an array of shops and cafes and regularly hosts lectures and screenings. The lavishly decorated Kuznya fuses restaurant, cocktail bar and nightclub and hosts frequent electronic music nights. In Moscow, by contrast, clubs have tended to have shorter lifespans; many of Moscow’s great venues have been forced to shut in the past few years. Most recently, in August, Moscow’s DIY club Rabitza was raided by police – a scene captured on film and shared widely online.

I talk about this to young producer Yulia Sigareva, a co-founder of experimental record label Bore Hole , who moved back to the city after a brief stint in the capital.

“Nightlife venues and promoters in St Petersburg, by comparison with Moscow, manage to maintain a stable position,” she says. Keen to establish a space in which experimental musicians can showcase their sounds, Yulia and a few of her friends are planning to open a club, connected to but distinct from Bore Hole. Close to the Obvodni canal, south of the city centre, the club will open its doors to the public in early December and will doubtless be a place to watch.

I ask Yulia to talk me through some of the important promoters in the city. One of these is Roots United , which runs a party series called OFF at another hybrid exhibition space/music venue called the Artplay, a 1,000-capacity building with a network of rooms and installations popular with St Petersburg’s electronic music enthusiasts.

Roots United also runs Present Perfect Festival at the Street Art Museum , in another former factory with a stone courtyard and an extensive plot of shipping containers in the suburban district of Novocherkasskaya.

Food and drink

Another young pair making their mark on the city are Liza Simonova and her business partner Maurice Shakaya.Still in their mid-20s, they opened their first cafe – a bagel shop named BGL, in 2012 – but it was their venture into Georgian cuisine, with Khachapuri I Vino two years ago, that brought them success. They now have a chain of eight restaurants.

I meet them at one of these, Lev I Ptichka (The Lion and the Bird), in a quiet precinct off the busy Bolshoy Prospekt. Its centrepiece is a wood-fired oven but the decor is minimalist with wooden furniture and floors; hospitable Georgia meets understated Scandinavia. “Georgian restaurants tended to be dark and dingy, with delicious food but terrible service, so they weren’t particularly pleasant to be in,” says Liza. “They had a Soviet format but we wanted to create a place where young people would feel at home.”

Georgian food is to Russians what Indian food is to Brits in terms of its popularity and ubiquity but here traditional dishes come with a contemporary twist, such as pizzas made with Georgian khachapuri dough and spicy lamb. Unusually low prices (an average bill is under £8) were a response to the economic crisis following the annexing of Crimea in 2014 – a decision that won over its younger customers.

Another restaurant that attracts a younger crowd with low prices and authentic food is Bekitzer , which serves Israeli favourites, such as shakshuka (spicy eggs) and falafel. At the slightly higher end is Duo Gastrobar , a Scandi-inspired restaurant that uses locally sourced products to makeEuropean classics.

Art scene and bars

One young artist who’s working hard to push the city’s experimental art scene forward is Polina Zinziver , whose multimedia illustrations are a comical “psychedelic” take on absurd moments of Russian life, particularly in her home city.

She takes me to the Berthold Centre , another new arts cluster in a former foundry near the city centre. From its grey stone exterior, which could easily be mistaken for a residential building, you wouldn’t guess that it houses a large exhibition hall, a theatre studio and a wealth of independent fashion boutiques run by young people, including Rediska Project (women’s fashion), vintage shop Ever Sale and much more. Polina’s works were shown in the Berhold Centre in July this year.

We move on to Treska , a snug bar/restaurant where Polina and fellow artists organise art fairs to showcase and sell their work, with a strictly enforced 500 rouble (£6) price cap. It’s in the courtyard of Golitsyn Loft , a newly restored 18th-century mansion on the Fontanka river (it’s also home to Civil Books Coffee and Wine, with marble fireplaces and high stucco ceilings). Treska hosts a wide range of film screenings, exhibitions and poetry readings, and serves bar snacks and drinks till late. A stone’s throw away is Produkty Bar , an intimate space with a jukebox, also on the Fontanka river.

On nearby Nekrasova street are three bars that attract loyal regulars among the city’s intelligentsia: Bazin , an unassuming, friendly spot; Khroniki , which is open until the early hours and serves waffles and a signature Free Ingria cocktail, made with vodka and local berries, which has garnered city-wide fame; and Redrum, a craft beer heaven.

As the night goes on we head to Co-op Garage Bar , an open-plan bar with exposed brick walls that’s a favourite haunt of the city’s fashionistas. Its outside space is a perfect spot to relish the “white nights” (at the end of May and in June, when there are only three hours of darkness). Within spitting distance, on the Griboyedov canal, is Pif Paf, a long and narrow drinking bar complete with hair salon that is a hit with the city’s artists and rock musicians. Over a beer, Polina and I discuss the many times the city has lived through periods of dramatic change. “Actually,” she tells me, “yesterday I was at the concert of a very old punk band and the main soloist said ‘Well, in the city of three revolutions, you’ll get a fourth.’”

• Flights were provided by British Airways ( britishairways.com ), which flies direct from London to St Petersburg from £72 each way.
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