Smartphones and Emerging Markets: Making the Mobile Revolution Sustainable

[Commentary] Mobile technology is now a ubiquitous part of our daily lives, whether we’re texting friends, checking the headlines, or mobilizing a protest. While smartphone technology remains most prevalent in the “developed” world, this is rapidly changing as the cost of devices drops, making smartphones more accessible to the growing middle classes in emerging markets (check out the $25 smartphone Mozilla showed off at Mobile World Congress in February).

Feature phones -- cellphones not connected to the Internet -- are already revolutionizing the lives of farmers, educators and health-care providers in the developing world. With the power of the Internet at their fingertips, individuals, families and entire communities will be further empowered.

Right now, emerging-market consumers conserve their Internet activity for opportunities when they have access to a wireless network, which may be once a week or less. Even if they have access to a wireless network, the high cost of data plans bars many people from accessing the Internet via their phone. In parallel to innovating down the cost of smartphone devices, we also have to tackle the critical issue of insufficient network infrastructure in the developing world.

The real challenge has to do with sustainability: Mobile network operators (MNOs) need to develop business models that allow them to profit from bringing data networks to poor and remote parts of the world. I believe the best form of smart, sustainable development comes from incentivizing existing, scalable business models.

One way to catch these consumers as their spending power grows could be for MNOs to partner directly with advertisers or application developers; this is already happening in the developed world, where phone carriers and makers have deals with certain search engines or map applications. Even if young users in Kenya or Ghana don’t have the money to spend on products just yet, as the consumer class in emerging markets grows, they will be extremely valuable to any business looking to hook a new generation of buyers.

[Eberhard is CEO and Founder, Mobile Accord]