Poorer Nations Go Online on Cellphones

Using cellphones to surf the Internet is booming in emerging markets, showing how countries with poor fixed-line telecommunications have become important drivers of growth for mobile-technology companies. Opera Software ASA, a Norwegian maker of Internet browsers for mobile devices, says its strongest customer growth is in places like Indonesia, Egypt and Russia. AdMob Inc., a San Francisco company that sends five billion ads to Internet-enabled mobile handsets each month, says Asia overtook North America in October as its largest regional market. Indonesia, Southeast Asia's largest economy, is the company's second-biggest market after the U.S., accounting for a quarter of its global ad traffic.