Read Part 1 of Snippets from Mobile World Congress 2013.
Mobile for Development
Connecting and providing services for the next billion mobile customers was a key theme throughout Mobile World Congress this year. The number of unique mobile subscribers has experienced double-digit growth over the last five years in developing countries and continues to grow. By contrast, access to basic services such as electricity and banking remains low. There were a number of sessions that looked at how mobile can be a tool to deliver essential information and financial services or as a means of identification.
In addition to our own Mobile Agriculture event, the other GSMA Mobile for Development programmes held their own seminars on mLearning, Mobile Money for the Unbanked, mHealth, mWomen, Mobile Identity, Mobile Enabled Community Services (MECS) and Disaster Response. From the mobile money events we heard that there are now 150 live mobile money services for the unbanked of which 41 launched in 2012 and there are more than 30 million users. Operators revealed how it has become core to their growth, for example, Millicom relayed that by the end of 2012, 8% of Millicom’s total mobile customer base was using some form of mobile payment service and in Tanzania the penetration rate is as high as 37%. The mWomen seminar launched their new report which finds women in developing countries represent a significant underserved market and a commercial opportunity for mobile financial service providers. The GSMA, with the support of the UK Government, announced the launch of their newest programme, Mobile Enabled Community Services (MECS) which explores how the mobile industry can support access to both energy and water services in off-grid areas.
Operator seminars – growth through emerging markets
Two seminars that caught my attention were ‘Connecting the Next Billions to the Internet’ and ‘Regional Focus: Sub-Saharan Africa’.
Connecting the Next Billions to the Internet:Panellists explained that it took 22 years for the first 2 billion to join the internet and the next 2 billion will join in 5 years. The next billion people to connect to the internet will come from developing markets and through mobile routes but a number of challenges will first need to be overcome, with device and service affordability at the top of the list. Manoj Kohil, CEO and joint MD of Bharti Airtel, called on device manufacturers to provide $10 price points for mobile broadband dongles and $30 price points for smartphones.
Regional Focus: Sub-Saharan Africa: All panellists agreed that Sub-Saharan Africa was a major growth opportunity for regional operators that are able to extend affordable services to rural areas. Growth will come from rural areas which currently have lower penetration and will start with voice and text messages before the rural areas become matured enough to migrate to data. Panellists discussed how to manage operations to ensure profitability. Airtel spoke of the importance to reduce costs such as sharing cell towers. MTN relayed how price elasticity in Africa is low and price competition can be more harmful than fruitful for mobile operators; others commented that only the first or possibly second operator per country is likely to be profitable. There were many examples of how mobile can be used for social benefit in Africa – the Nigerian minister for communications spoke about how mobile can be used for development and gave the example of how subsidies for farmers are now distributed via mobile money which is resulting in millions of dollars’ worth of savings.
New handsets unveiled targeted at developing markets: Nokia CEO Stephen Elop revealed a new range of feature phones at lower price points and targeted at developing markets. The new Nokia entry phone 105 has a standby time of 35 days, durable dust and splash-proof keypad and a price point of €15. A more upmarket feature phone 301 costing €65 was released and can access data content. Microsoft announced as part of its 4Afrika initiative a lower cost windows smartphone (Huawei) and the use of white space to deliver data services. The claim is that white space BSTs can be deployed for around $2500 with a much smaller footprint (physical and energy). This could prove an interesting solution for extended data bandwidth into rural areas and supplement 3G and 2G data networks and M2M services.