This is China! BLOG

Mobile Phone Grok in China

A couple weeks ago in The Economist Magazine Technology Quarterly I read a fascinating article about how mobile phone access to the internet will trump access through the PC in developing countries, especially China.The article is entitled, The Meek Shall Inherit the Web.

“This year China overtook America as the country with the largest number of internet users—currently over 250m. And China also has some 600m mobile-phone subscribers, more than any other country, so the potential for the mobile internet is enormous. Companies that stake their reputations on being at the technological forefront understand this. Last year Lee Kai-fu, Google’s president in China, announced that Google was redesigning its products for a market where ‘most Chinese users who touch the mobile internet will have no PC at all.’”

Westerners who do not make their lives in China see China with binary vision: either it is still a Maoist bastion of Red Book toting factory workers OR it’s a post-modern threat to Western sensibilities about the Free World. Of course, China is neither and A LOT more in between. One particular usage of mobile phones by students in the hinterlands of China illustrates this:

“As countries work their way up the development ladder, however, the situation changes in favour of full mobile-web access. Jim Lee, a manager at Nokia’s Beijing office, says he was surprised to find that university students in remote regions of China were buying Nokia N-series smart-phones, costing several months of their disposable income. Such handsets are status symbols, but there are also pragmatic reasons to buy them. With up to eight students in each dorm room, phones are often the only practical way for students to access the web for their studies. And smart-phones are expensive, but operators often provide great deals on data tariffs to attract new customers.”

If nothing else, the trend toward using the mobile phone as a gateway to the internet will be a boon to eyeglass and contact lens manufacturers. Bausch and Lomb execs must be jumping for joy at the prospect.