This is not your father’s telecom industry – Part 3: emerging markets

This is the second part of a talk I gave last year. It’s still relevant. I’ve written this from my notes.

This is a special topic of mine.

When I wrote this last year, there was a promise of 1 billion new subscribers on the way, of which most (80%?) do not have a computer. There was a promise of 3 billion subscribers (which we passed) by the end of last year, most text-voice phones.

When Nokia announced the billionth phone they sold, it was not without meaning when they said a woman in Nigeria bought a Nokia 1100 (which has sold over 100 million – a single device!).

To understand the scale, there are (were, the data’s from jun06):

• 3.2 M Blackberries
• 50 M PDAs
• 70 M iPods
• 190 M Gameboys
• 820 M PCs
• 1.5 B TV sets
• 2 B Mobile phones [CS: and growing faster than all the others, I’m sure]

How does that impact what kinds of services we should offer? The web-heads have no idea.

And I want to see the development of more low cost, but ingenious service. Mobiles are transforming the developing world, it’s a leapfrogging technology.

Some anecdotes

• Have you heard of phone ladies, who get a phone and an umbrella and sit in prominent area of town offering phone service for those without phones? Well, there are the wheelchair guys, too. I heard a story of two guys in wheelchairs that just couldn’t keep out of trouble until one day they both started offering phone service, like the phone ladies. How’s that for uplifting?
• Grameen Bank, which revolutionized the world of credit in the developing world with micro-loans, worked with Nokia and others to develop a loan solution than included an antenna, phone, and start-up funds to create a local village operator.
• Finally, remittances send back by emigrants, have held up many an economy. But, since so few have bank accounts, phone prepay minutes have become a money scheme on their own. not only can remittances be accepted as minutes, but minutes are used as a currency in many markets. Indeed, Nokia has created some solutions specifically to help users keep using this. [One of the people at my talk asked what would happen to prepay minutes as flat-rate spreads to other markets. Good question, reminding me of the law of unintended consequences.]