Читать книгу Standing on the Sun - Christopher Meyer - Страница 14

Mobile Internet devices are important because they represent a tipping point in the world's access to shared information—and they produce a lot of it as well. The idea of providing everyone on Earth with a laptop has been superseded by the explosive growth of smartphones; Gartner reported that third-quarter 2010 sales of the devices were 96 percent higher than in 2009. Internet-connected phones have been a cool development for technophiles in developed economies, who can now layer browsing and snapshooting onto their calling and texting. But it's been a crucial development in emerging economies, where the value delivered previously had not reached the threshold to justify the purchase. The breakthrough performance of mobile Internet devices ensures that they will become ubiquitous and that ubiquity in itself will become the story as the network they combine to create becomes the prevailing information infrastructure.

Already, cell phones have become the safest and most convenient means for individuals to transfer funds in many parts of Africa, simply because the devices have the capability and are at hand. In Bangladesh, entrepreneur Kamal Quadir has created CellBazaar, a market along the lines of Craigslist, to connect buyers and sellers, and has chosen to base it on a mobile device platform. (Yes, Kamal is Iqbal's brother.) In Katine, Uganda, farmers use phones to check prices, and, armed with market information, they band together to eliminate predatory middlemen.

What does this mean for capitalism? If gaining access to functioning markets is as simple as using a handheld device, a whole class of potential entrepreneurs who were sitting on the sidelines will now be in the system and helping to shape it, at the expense of those who have used their capital advantage to extract value. The economic value of this connectivity is conveyed by this statistic: although the emerging economies' income per capita is about one-ninth of the G7's ($3,000 per year versus $28,700), the penetration of mobile phones is effectively the same—76 phones per 100 people, versus 76 per 109. As ubiquitous mobile devices increasingly promote transparency and inclusiveness, expect them to have an impact on many industries beyond banking, including media, medicine, and education.