Newley Purnell
From today’s WSJ: Mobile Service Targets Cambodia’s ‘Unbanked’:
How do you roll out a banking service in a place where most people don’t have bank accounts?
Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. tackled that question in developing WING, a banking and payment system it launched in Cambodia early last year.
{ 0 comments }
Economist: Mobile phones in South-East Asia: Talk is cheap
Take a taxi in Bangkok and the driver’s mobile phone is sure to chirp. A long conversation ensues, usually by speakerphone, since few cabbies bother with headsets. It is not just that cabbies are chatty; it is also that talk is cheap. Once reserved for the rich, mobile phones are now ubiquitous in South-East Asia.
But what is good news for taxi drivers is less so for mobile operators. Price wars in nearly-saturated markets have mangled profit margins. One answer is to prod customers to use data services, such as e-mail, web-browsing and access to a variety of “applications”—all of which could, some analysts think, spur new growth.
Yet this new growth will not come easy…
(Via Jon Russell.)
{ 2 comments }
Here’s another image from my recent Bangladesh trip that I wanted to share. This photo is part of the “Faces of Bangladesh” photoset I mentioned yesterday, though I didn’t include it in yesterday’s post.
Consider this: In 2009, even dock workers in Bangladesh own mobile phones equipped with cameras.
I was exploring Sadarghat, Dhaka’s riverfront area, a place crowded with passenger ferries and cargo ships. I was taking pictures and talking to folks when I noticed a cluster of people gathered behind me. I turned around to find that these guys (pictured above) were snapping cell phone photos of me.
In Bangladesh — one of the world’s poorest countries — nearly half of the population lives on less than 1 US dollar per day. But mobile phone penetration has grown rapidly in recent years.
I was able to purchase, for example, a SIM card and plenty of minutes from a Grameenphone (Bangladesh mobile operator) counter at the airport in Dhaka. SIM cards are available for purchase throughout Asia, of course, but Bangladesh sees few tourists. And throughout the country, many people sported cell phones; I was frequently asked to pose for cell phone photos, and I even a noticed a few people recording cell phone videos of me.
I also found the mobile reception throughout the country to be excellent; I didn’t suffer a single dropped call in eight days, as I might have if I were traveling in the US. (On the down side, I was supposed to receive MMS support via Grameenphone — a service not often provided with pre-paid plans — but that support didn’t materialize.)
For more on cell phone usage in Bangladesh, you can find an article from the IDA (International Development Association) on the World Bank site.
And the Wikipedia page for Grameenphone founder Iqbal Quadir contains more info on technology and development in Bangladesh.
{ 0 comments }
For sale in the UK: Vintage mobile phones. What more is there to say? Simply awesome.
The Motorola DynaTac 8000, pictured above, is reminiscent of the model that Michael Douglas (aka Gordon Gekko) barks into while walking along the beach in 1987′s Wall Street*.
*How come no one told me there’s a sequel in the works?
{ 0 comments }
