For the first time, a smartphone operating system is going to impact more than rich people in the US and Europe, and that is pretty darn revolutionary.
Simply and powerfully put. As third-world countries come online they are going to be starting and staying with the mobile web. You can already see this at work in a number of African countries where mobile payments have proliferated and matured at an astonishing rate. That is just an early signal of the tectonic shift occurring.
> You can already see this at work in a number of African countries where mobile payments have proliferated and matured at an astonishing rate.
This, however, has been going on for half a decade and has absolutely nothing to do with smartphone and smartphone OSes.
If anything, smartphones and their terrible battery lives can only hamper that kind of efforts in places where access to electricity is unreliable and a common charging technology is handcrank-powered.
edit: ah, so going against the completely nonsensical (because absent) link implied by richardburton between smartphones and african mobile payments (let alone Android and the latter) yields graytexting. Thanks, I guess?
> This, however, has been going on for half a decade and has absolutely nothing to do with smartphone and smartphone OSes.
No, but more and more smartphones (hopefully with better battery life than the top of the line stuff we get in the west) will start being sold in Africa and from the looks of it they will be powered by Android.
I have been to Africa. Its quite big. Most people have the regular nokia phones. But there are still a large number of people (tens of millions) with smartphones. And the most popular smartphone appears to be the blackberry. It completely dominates. Maybe because the networks bias their dataplans towards the blackberry and maybe the messaging, I don't know. And there is peer pressure. My android phone was looked at with scorn and there were many helpful suggestions to switch to the blackberry to which I had to constantly explain that I was happy with my phone. The android tablets fare better though.
Could it be Blackberry is popular because of the free "ping" service? At least that is what seems to drive the mass adoption of them (and the peer pressure) among teenagers here in the Netherlands: the free unlimited "texting" with other Blackberry users.
I just hope that the poor of the world don't end up with a $180 phone bill like I have to deal with in order to have mobile web access. Sadly, in some countries that would be almost 6 months' income.
More people in India have mobile phones than have access to sanitary toilets.
The average Indian user is worth about 0.03c to a network, with no contracts or lockins, and people frequently switch network to network depending on deals.
In fact, in order to avoid fees, a new system has appeared. Calling, letting it ring once, and hanging up. It doesn't cost but it DOES ping the other person.
These call-backs are becoming so pervasive that businesses let people call-back and the business calls them back, at their own expensive, to offer whatever service. Some Indian apps are also incorporating the call-back system into their communication structure.
Don't think that just because we have dumb contracts and bills that the developing world will as well.
Here in the UK, my mobile phone bill is £3.33/month and I get 500MB of data with that.
EDIT: I do this by using T-Mobile PAYG and buying their 6 month Internet booster for £20, twice a year. I've managed to convince all my regular contacts to use Kik Messenger instead of SMS, so I don't have to pay for SMS. I very rarely make phone calls, but I have VOIP with localphone.com when I have to.
At the time I wrote the post, Google's conversion told me it was in the high $4 range. Right now it's saying it is $5.17. Close enough to let the point stand.
Just checked out ovh. Looks good, but because of ovh's 99p/month charge, it still works out cheaper to use localphone unless you make at least a couple of hours of calls per month.
You do get an incoming number that would cost a lot more with localphone. You see localphone is a business and needs to make money. OVH thinks it's a charity just like Google. Maybe a little more generous. I absolutely love their kimsufi.co.uk servers.
I end up using 700 minutes per month just on my line, but I really only talk for about an hour. The majority of my calls are 5-30 second messages from my employer.
Data rates are much cheaper in places where telecom companies don't have to recover the cost of old and outdated equipment. For example, the rates in India are very reasonable, even from mainstream operators
Simply and powerfully put. As third-world countries come online they are going to be starting and staying with the mobile web. You can already see this at work in a number of African countries where mobile payments have proliferated and matured at an astonishing rate. That is just an early signal of the tectonic shift occurring.