Given the right business model, high-tech devices can also find appropriate uses in developing countries.

Wireless Access

When a group of emerging market cellular operators put out a tender for low-cost basic GSM phones, nobody paid much attention until Motorola won the tender by promising to produce the phones at prices as low as $35 each. The company started shipping the first 6 million phones this past summer. Not long after, Sony-Ericsson also announced low cost phones for low-income, BOP markets. Most recently, Germany-based Infineon Technologies announced their intentions to begin selling handsets for under $20 beginning in early 2006. Since the most rapidly growing cellular markets are in Africa, Asia, and Latin America – with more than 500 million customers in China, India, and Brazil alone – this should not be surprising. Nonetheless, it marks the emergence of meaningful consumer market power in telecommunications equipment for the developing world.