Mobile Phones Making A Difference

“Africa has an average of just one land line for every 33 people, but cellphones are enabling millions of people to skip a technological generation and bound straight from letter-writing to instant messaging.”

The New York Times reports on dramtic rise in mobile phone use in Africa. In many ways this is a story that is being repeated around the developing world (and in startling numbers here in India as well). Both economically and developmentally, there is a valuable lesson in rethinking approaches to pricing and marketing.

“Initially, he said, mobile operators based their predictions of cellphone use on the typical land-line user, someone with a bank account, a job and a fixed address. “The woman selling vegetables in the market, with the baby and the umbrella, they weren’t in the profile of the normal subscriber,” Mr. Tour?© said. “But they use them.””