“You don’t even need to own a phone to benefit from one”. Part of I.D.E.’s work included setting up farm cooperatives in Nepal, where farmers would bring their vegetables to a local person with a phone, who then acted as a commissioned sales agent, using the phone to check market prices and arranging for the most profitable sale. “People making $1 a day can’t afford a phone, but if they start making more profit in their farming, you can bet they’ll buy a phone as a next step”

chipchase gets the NYT writeup.
2008-04-13:

Americans, and particularly those in lower-income groups, are deriving clear economic benefits from phones—even though low-income groups are far less likely to own a phone. if the 38% of these 45.2m low-income, bottom quintile households that do not now have phones were to start using them, and earn money at the same rate as those households that do own phones—it would add $2.9b to household incomes.

i am especially interested in the m-banking aspect. death to payday loans. somewhere, koranteng is smiling.

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