NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Motorola is to produce 6 million mobile phones each is priced at USD 30 (USD1 = CNY 8.11), and telecom operators of developing countries will assume the responsibility for the product sale. However, the Emerging Market Handset Programme (EMH) does not develop as smooth as expected in China, said Huang Baozhong, Senior Advisor of the GSM Association. In China, telecom carriers are not interested in the programme, and consumers are unwilling to buy such cheap mobile phone...

Source

sinocast.com

Multichannel Satellite TV Pushes Into the Hinterland to Tap Huge Growth Market

A satellite-television boom in India is finally pushing multichannel TV into its vast rural hinterland and opening a new commercial battlefield in one of the world’s biggest TV markets. Places like Lodra, a village of two thousand people and a few hundred mud huts, 700 kilometers north of here in Gujarat state, typify the new phenomenon. At dusk, hundreds of people routinely gather around a TV set propped on a wooden table in the village center. They will watch until early morning...

Source

The Wall Street Journal (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

In India, Thinking Big by Thinking Small

With every debit card replaced by a thumbprint, every mutual fund peddled at a village store and every insurance policy sold in $2 bits, a new variety of bank is germinating in the bleak, unlikely soil of rural India. One in nine human beings is an Indian villager, and 70 percent of Indian villagers have no bank account, inhabiting a financial parallel universe in which savings are a gold necklace and loans come from pistol-packing moneylenders. As global megabanks penetra...

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The International Herald Tribune (link opens in a new window)

High Taxes Keep Mobile Phones Out of Reach – GSMA

High taxes in many developing countries have made mobile communications unaffordable for hundreds of millions of people, holding back social and economic development, according to a study by the GSM Association (GSMA). GSMA is the global trade association representing more than 680 GSM mobile phone operators across 210 countries of the world. In addition, more than 150 manufacturers and suppliers support the Association’s initiatives as key partners. According to the GSMA res...

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Daily Champion (link opens in a new window)

Sub-$100 Laptop Design Unveiled

Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Labs, has been outlining designs for a sub-$100 PC. The laptop will be tough and foldable in different ways, with a hand crank for when there is no power supply. Professor Negroponte came up with the idea for a cheap computer for all after visiting a Cambodian village. His non-profit One Laptop Per Child group plans to have up to 15 million machines in production wi...

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BBC News (link opens in a new window)

The handsets, wholesale-priced at under $30, are targeted for markets such as India, South Africa, N

Taipei, Taiwan ? The campaign to provide ultra low-cost handsets to developing markets crossed into its second phase Tuesday (Sept. 27) with Motorola Inc. rolling out several models based on its C11x platform that bring the wholesale cost below $30. Motorola introduced the new models at the 3GSM World Congress in Singapore when the GSM Association revealed the company had again won the tender to supply handsets to operators in emerging countries. The phones are targeted for markets a...

Source

InformationWeek (link opens in a new window)

Expanding public-private partnerships is the best way to achieve African development breakthroughs

The best solutions are found when the public and private sectors join forces. Sir, Jeffrey Sachs’ article (Ambition and action are as important as commitments, September 15) calls for urgent, comprehensive action by the international community to achieve internationally agreed development goals and objectives, including the Millennium Development Goals and a Green Revolution for Africa. It is true that the UN and Bretton Woods i...

Source

Financial Times (Letters) (link opens in a new window)

Infineon develops platform design for ultra low-cost mobile phone

The market at the bottom of the pyramid has begun to attract the attention of a variety of industries; one of the most recent being the semiconductor industry. ? A German company, Infineon Technologies, has developed a platform design for an ultra low-cost (ULC) mobile phone that the company believes could bring down the production cost of a functional mobile phone to below $20 from the current level of $35. ? At a press conference held today by Infineon, S Surya, managing di...