In my previous post we looked at a
report that put in context the percentage that smartphones have within the larger trope of the cellular phone market. What was shocking about that market was not the percentage of smartphones, but the sheer size of the cellular phone market on a global level.
According to a 2010 study, 77% of the worlds population ( roughly 5.3 billion people) were projected to be mobile service subscribers by the end of 2010. Thats crazy! Crazy in a world that has 7 billion people. In a world where the richest mobile users can afford to play crazy birds on their iPhone 4S, or BBM their socialites on their Blackberrys, where on the socioeconomic bell curve are the rest of us? If mobile telecommunications companies are extending their systems of infrastructure the most
remote corners of Nepal, where then do we find our poorest mobile telephone users? What does it mean to have membership in the mobile App community? What communities of practice are found around mobile App users? How do these communities relate to the larger paradigm of cellular phone users? (non-App but cellularly enabled users)
To answer these questions we must first look at what is the average cost of membership within the smartphone community? That number is particularly difficult to parse due to the myrade of smoke and mirror schemes that North American cellphone companies play with their clients, often hiding the true cost of the devise within the costs of the two year, sometimes three year contracts that clients must sign. From browsing through several cellular providers websites (
ATT,
Rogers,
Fido,
Bell &
Version) , it was quite apparent that the general cost of membership started at $50.00 and topped out at around $300.00 for the most expensive devises. However those
costs were masked within the sub-structure of the packaging plan. A smartphone needs to have access to the internet, and in order to access all of its features one must purchase both a data plan as well as a minutes plan. These plans many of them starting at $15 per month, separately for data and minutes. $15 a month may not seem like a huge cost of membership, but keep in mind that these plans often force the consumer into a two or three year contract with the service provider. A $15 a month minutes fee over the span of a year is $180. Combine that with the average cost of a smartphone which is around $150 and the cost of the
cheapest per month data plan, and you are looking at roughly $450.00 in service alone per year, this does not take into account overages, taxes, and service provider fees associated with owning the devise.
CBC News recently released a piece that analyzes the
cost of owning a cellphone in Canada with the cost of 19 other nations around the world. Their average estimate for owning a cellphone ( presumably smartphone) in Canada was $572.86 annually. Comparatively globally the price of cellphone ownership is between $149.00 in Denmark, to a high of $693.63 in Japan. The relative average was around $400. However, this survey only compared 19 countries, almost all of them were developed countries with relatively high GDPs, presumably memberships in these communities of practice are more or less tied in with smartphone ownership (the 27%), what about the other 73% of the worlds 5.3 billion cellphone users? Where do they fall in on the curve?
To explore this question further The New York Times ran an article titled
"Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?" that examines the relationship that the other 73% of cellphone users have with their devises. It is interesting to point out that cellphone use in the developing world functions much more heavily on text msgs, and communication as a vital tool for small businesses, and independent farmers. The article points to the huge advantage that sellers can have by being connected to the world via cellphone, and the advantage of the SMS msg as a mode of communication in lieu of placing actual telephone calls on a cellular phone. In the developing world the ability to access communication infrastructures is seen as a "just in time" aspect, where having access to the communication articulations can literally mean the difference between life or death if you are, for example: a mother in Sub Saharan Africa needing to transport your sick child to a doctor 3 hours walk away. Being able to SSM msg the doctor to see if he is even in town can be a huge life saving advantage. This is in huge contrast to the modes of practice that developed world users of cellphones and smartphone infrastructures interact and engage with the devices. Where in the developed world "just in time" might mean you accessed on your smartphone the "Google Maps" App and quickly searched your transit itinerary for your 3pm business meeting, instantaneously plotting the most efficient way of travel, which told you that a metro was leaving in 3 minutes from a transit station a few blocks away from your current GPS plotted location that you were able to run to "just in time" to catch the train.
Of course, this article was written in spring of 2008, roughly four years later, one must wonder how has the proliferation of smartphone Apps that specifically target productivity and business penetrate into the developing world markets? With the cost of membership within the broader trope of the smartphone community of practice becoming more and more affordable, how does this expanding accessibility effect those in the developing world? For smartphone companies, and App developers at what price point do smartphones have to reach in order to be accessible by the 'other 73%' of cellular phone users? Is this accessibility actually desired by the agents involved in the production and marketing of smartphones and Apps? Is the exclusivity of the smartphone membership and its associated Apps a desired trait of this community of practice? As well as what does this dichotomy of smartphone / feature phone (non smart phone) usage and membership tell us about the globalization of humanity as a whole?
