tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8040149901309753575.post-16489097663915508832008-04-12T11:55:00.000-07:002008-04-12T14:51:58.661-07:00In an extensive article, Sara Corbett reports on the field experience of Jan Chipchase, a Nokia designer and researcher. His work illustrates both the increasing demand for mobile phones in developing countries and how this trend presents economic opportunity on a global scale. <br /><br /><strong>Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?</strong><br />By: Sara Corbett<br /><span style="color:#cc0000;">New York Times<br /></span>April 13, 2008<br /><br />...In an increasingly transitory world, the cellphone is becoming the one fixed piece of our identity....On-the-ground intelligence-gathering is central to what’s known as human-centered design, a business-world niche that has become especially important to ultracompetitive high-tech companies trying to figure out how to write software, design laptops or build cellphones that people find useful and unintimidating and will thus spend money on. Several companies, including <a title="More information about Intel Corporation" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/intel_corporation/index.html?inline=nyt-org">Intel</a>, <a title="More information about Motorola Inc." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/motorola_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org">Motorola</a> and <a title="More information about Microsoft Corporation" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/microsoft_corporation/index.html?inline=nyt-org">Microsoft</a>, employ trained anthropologists to study potential customers, while Nokia’s researchers, including Chipchase, more often have degrees in design.<br /><br />The premise of the work [for a human-behavior-researcher] is simple — get to know your potential customers as well as possible before you make a product for them....The possibilities afforded by a proliferation of cellphones are potentially revolutionary. Today, there are more than 3.3 billion mobile-phone subscriptions worldwide, which means that there are at least three billion people who don’t own cellphones, the bulk of them to be found in Africa and Asia. Even the smallest improvements in efficiency, amplified across those additional three billion people, could reshape the global economy in ways that we are just beginning to understand.<br /><br />To get a sense of how rapidly cellphones are penetrating the global marketplace, you need only to look at the sales figures. According to statistics from the market database Wireless Intelligence, it took about 20 years for the first billion mobile phones to sell worldwide. The second billion sold in four years, and the third billion sold in two. Eighty percent of the world’s population now lives within range of a cellular network, which is double the level in 2000. And figures from the International Telecommunications Union show that by the end of 2006, 68 percent of the world’s mobile subscriptions were in developing countries. As more and more countries abandon government-run telecom systems, offering cellular network licenses to the highest-bidding private investors and without the burden of navigating pre-established bureaucratic chains, new towers are going up at a furious pace. Unlike fixed-line phone networks, which are expensive to build and maintain and require customers to have both a permanent address and the ability to pay a monthly bill, or personal computers, which are not just costly but demand literacy as well, the cellphone is more egalitarian, at least to a point....<br /><br />Some of the mobile phone’s biggest boosters are those who believe that pumping international aid money into poor countries is less effective than encouraging economic growth through commerce, also called “inclusive capitalism.” Even as sales continue to grow, it is yet to be seen whether the mobile phone will play a significant, sustained role in alleviating poverty in the developing world....<br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/magazine/13anthropology-t.html?pagewanted=1&amp;ref=technology">http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/magazine/13anthropology-t.html?pagewanted=1&amp;ref=technology</a><br /><br />To stay ahead on the latest mobile devices and plans offered by different cellphone providers, visit: <a href="http://1010phonerates.com/cell_phone_comparisons.html">http://1010phonerates.com/cell_phone_comparisons.html</a>1010 NEW INFOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03470726011009507059noreply@blogger.com