How does the world respond to the advances in technology, and how has it been influenced? From business to travel to investing, we explore these topics.
In my last post, I spoke of my trip to Ethiopia and the challenge of staying connected. This caused me to look into searching for wifi devices that work anywhere.
And interestingly, out of all the WiFi devices seen, I’ve taken an interest in Skyroam. If you’re not interested in reading my perspective, you may visit their site here.
Advertisement for Skyroam.
Otherwise continue below.
Mobile Hotspots No Contract
Isn’t it nice to utilize wifi devices without any contracts? That’s what’s great about Skyroam’s pay-as-you-go feature. Users can pay for what they intend to use whether abroad or locally.
After all, what’s the point of paying for packages on services when there’s a surplus on unused days and minutes?!
Skyroam Solis Reviews Below
I’ve had this problem while staying in hotels in the Atlantic City area. Buying 24 hours and only using less than 16.
With Skyroam, subscribers can go and use their options without the commitments. These choices are either to Buy Or Rent. Frequent travelers are able to own their wifi devices outright, while others prefer to rent.
Again, customers pay for the days they use, and without the use of a SIM card.
Global Wifi
Staying connected has become a top priority for most travelers. And that equally includes those looking to browse from many countries in the world. Therefore, it’s important that most wifi devices work wherever you’re located
However, there’s no promise they provide coverage to a particular country one’s traveling to. In fact, Ethiopia, my favorite country, was not listed.
Advertisement banner. Skyroam offers two different wifi devices. The SOLIS being the newest addition.
Anyway, customers who intend to travel anywhere in the world can easily look up which part of the globe they’re able to use their wifi device. The How It Works page provides an extensive list of countries available. Just scroll down to the areas that says “PORTABLE WIFI IN 120+ COUNTRIES” .
SkyRoam Solis Companion Additionals
As per their website, Wifi devices come with some great features. These additions include:
WiFi 4G LTE – Reliable speed worldwide for connections to any device
Power Bank – Charge multiple devices such as phones, Bluetooth headsets and other items
Sharing – Connect up to 5 devices at once to browse. Good for if and when a traveler meets up with other friends locally or abroad.
Conclusion
Traveling and staying connected go hand in hand. But doing both at an affordable rate makes a huge difference. With Skyroam WiFi devices, travelers can use 4G LTE speeds in over 150+ countries.
Consider using their device for your travel needs where ever you may wish to stay!
PS, if you’re interested in signing up, I’ve worked out with Skyroam to offer a discount. Upon checkout, you may use this coupon code: MOBILEI95.
Advert banner for wifi devices offering unlimited global access
*Links to Skyroam are affiliate pages. Click here to learn more.
In the blog post on Internet Daily Activity, I suppose I forget to add the convenience of making donations to charities online, to and from anywhere around the world!
Getting Around
There are Apps locals use to get around that comparable to Uber. They are:
Now, I did not use either of these Apps because I was unable to register my mobile from Ethio Telecom. Apparently, you’ll need to submit your passport photo. Unfortunately, I was unable because there were system failures each time I was there.
Staying Connected
Staying connected in Ethiopia wasn’t necessarily easy due mishaps from Ethio Telecom. I simply used the complimentary WiFi from both of the budget hotels I’ve stayed in (I occasionally stay in different areas while overseas on vacation).
That’s how I found out about the Viber App as means to communicate and send messages so as long as WiFi’s present. Free messaging applies to other Viber users.
On a side note, maybe one day I’ll write up on a company that offers pay as you go WiFi services for travelers.
Traveling around Ethiopia, one has to accept that, although there’s an increase in ATM machines, most businesses primarily accept payments through cash.
As I’ve stated before, this was my 5th time in the country, so I’m used to it. No big deal.
Conclusion
Bottom line, Ethiopia’s my favorite country. And because they’re making progress in terms of connectivity, it gives me an opportunity to enjoy this nation even more. And thanks to the Internet/Mobile industry, it makes things extremely convenient for world travelers.
Thinking of Facebook bitcoin advertising? Might want to put those plans on hold.
As another blow to the cryptocurrency community, Facebook has announced they’re no longer accepting advertisements of any content promoting the digital cash.
This is an effort by the social media powerhouse to forbid campaigns deemed “misleading or deceptive”.
Details on this subject was reported Tuesday January 30, 2018 on MSNBC.
It’s another challenge for those with faith in cryptocurrency.
While many still have hope, previous concerns have been:
Which pretty much means it’s for Muslim men in Indonesia:
App Launch Controversy
Of course, dating was part of the Internet Daily Life post regarding society’s online activity. And as you may know, the Internet has given a platform for anyone with an idea to reach the masses.
But, I wasn’t expecting to come across this. The Ayopoligami founder ran into a few glitches, however.
Turns out, upon it’s initial launch, a bit of controversy followed. In fact, some of the criticisms of the app include:
Did anyone read about the Estonia cryptocurrency development? Turns out, the nation responsible for Skype and TransferWise was rumored to issue their own digital currency called estcoins.
Through its e-Residency program (a system that allows entrepreneurs a chance at running a business globally), the proposal would make the Baltic country the first to have an Initial Coin Offering.
Interestingly, although this news has been reported on by TechCrunch, there’s nothing written in stone.
In fact, according to QC.com, Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, was quoted as stating:
No member state can introduce its own currency; the currency of the euro zone is the euro.
While his statement may come off as a dash in hopes, the e-Residency website continues to stay updated with news for its readers however.
Of course, while crypotocurrencies are popular among the tech savvy generation, it still has a long way to go before being recognized by the masses as a form of exchange.
Some more resources worth reading on this subject:
The most popular YouTube videos in India get hundreds of thousands of views every week, attesting to the popularity of the video sharing service in India. Like in the Hollywood-dominated West the popular YouTube videos in India are the latest trailers of new Bollywood releases or the hottest songs from Indian rock stars or musicians.
Tamil actor/singer Dhanush’s “Why this Kolaveri” was perhaps one of the most popular YouTube videos in India and had an impact similar to the one created by the incredibly famous and record breaking YouTube sensation, Gangnam Style by South Korean pop start PSY.
Browsing through YouTube, along with Facebook, is what a majority of Indians do on their mobile phones. India is the fastest growing smartphone market in the world, and most Indian buyers use their ultra-cheap smartphones to watch videos on YouTube.
The Importance of Mobile
Indeed, mobile is the most important part of YouTube’s India strategy, as the company owned by Google focuses on non-PC devices in countries with relatively lower PC and internet penetration such as India. Worldwide, mobile accounts for 25% of YouTube’s daily views, 1 billion in all, and this percentage is much higher in lower income countries such as India, or for that matter, in Africa.
India is one of YouTube’s top five markets in the world and hence quite significant. YouTube’s primary focus is to keep growing alongside, as the penetration of smartphones, internet and “smart” DTH television grows in India. The primary focus, as discussed earlier, is on mobile penetration. YouTube plans to take advantage of the rising popularity of YouTube videos in India by integrating YouTube videos with direct-to-home (DTH) television subscriptions provided by Indian companies such as with Airtel, Tata Sky and Dish TV.
Not Just A Bollywood Thing
While the most popular YouTube videos in India have related to Bollywood, it is not necessarily the case that all top content providers in India for YouTube have links to movies to India’s “City of Dreams”.
There are a plenty of content providers for YouTube in the country who have done remarkably well with their educational videos – such as, “how to change your hard drive”, product review videos – “New Google Nexus 6 Review” or “iPhone 6 Review” or some thrilling videos such as the video of stuntmen in Mumbai performing dangerous acrobatics on a moving train, which became viral, and eventually created a huge political storm, leading to stricter monitoring of Indian trains.
Point is, there is a great hunger in India for new and original videos, interesting videos, and they may have nothing whatsoever to do with Bollywood.
Video Tutorial in Hindi:
YouTube Popularity For Politics
Even politicians in India have taken to YouTube in a big way for their campaigning, none more so than India’s popular prime minister, Narendra Modi. Mr. Modi made YouTube and other social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook the corner stones of his campaigning in the recently concluded election, which he won by a landslide victory. Mr. Modi has been a pioneer in Indian politics and very good with technology – which makes him very popular among India’s young voters. Any YouTube video of the new Indian prime minister’s speeches, was likely to get hundreds of thousands of views. Indeed, fans of the Indian prime minister have a dedicated YouTube channel where his speeches were broadcasted. Hence, it’s not outlandish to suggest that YouTube could claim a small but significant role in Mr. Modi being the prime minister of India today!
YouTube-India Partnerships
Some of the most popular YouTube videos in India have been partnerships. YouTube has had highly successful partnerships with content creators such as the India Comedy Week a few years back, during which over 400 hours of comedy content were hosted by YouTube that featured originals and some all-time favorite TV comedy shows such as Mamman Bhai, Dilli Ki Billi and Shit People Say.
YouTube’s Diverse Language Options
Another important thing done by YouTube is not to cater to India’s most popular languages – Hindi and English – alone. YouTube has made a concerted effort to target speakers of other major Indian languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Kannada, Bengali, Malyalam, Gujarati, Punjabi as well as various dialects of Hindi such as Bhojpuri and Rajasthani.
Moving Forward
While doing business in India, YouTube has been smarter than many other multinational companies. The big reason for YouTube’s great success in India is how well the US based company has “Indianized” itself and adapted to Indian tastes and sensibilities. And the best part is that, we have seen nothing yet – YouTube will only get stronger and more popular in India over the next few years.
Viki TV is a fantastic global television site that has allowed millions of viewers to watch, discover, and even add subtitles to prime time television movies and shows in as many as 200 different languages.
Viki aims to do away with the cultural and language barriers that have stood between the different nations and their media. It has, through recent years, even reached a global audience of almost 1 billion users!
An Example Of A South Korean Drama
That’s significant, because that’s a large percentage of the entire world’s population of people. It has a primary focus on Asian media, but also features media from many other countries from around the globe.
Features of Viki TV
Viki allows you to watch, via streaming, premium licensed content in a similar, albeit much more convenient way than other video streaming services. Viki was actually the first platform that allowed users to add subtitles to videos in real-time, which is what gave it such a great reputation among the global audience.
The subtitling system even allows for multiple languages, boasting subtitles currently in up to 160 different languages.
If you’re interested in free viewing, you can watch many shows and movies on Viki for free, with no charge. But if you want a more premium membership so that you don’t have to see advertisements, they offer a great price of membership.
Once you subscribe, you’ll never see another advertisement, which streamlines your viewing pleasures. Its well worth it to many, and it helps to support the bustling movement of globalizing media culture.
What Is Another Example of a Show on Viki?
One prevalent show that is getting a lot of attention is Strong Woman Do Bong Soon, played by Park Bo-Young. It’s an intriguing and hilarious drama/comedy about a young woman named Bong-Soon. She was born with super human strength, which turns out to be hereditary.
Bong-Soon helps a bus driver that is being attacked by some thugs, and a small group of thugs wind up attacking her. She is very easily able to vanquish them. During that time, Ahn Min-Hyuk (real name Park Hyung Sik) arrives on the scene and sees Bong-Soon in action. Since Min-Hyuk is the CEO of a large scale video gaming company, and loves this type of thing, he thinks that Bong-Soon would be an outstanding body guard for himself and his company.
He also decides to offer her a position in the planning department if things turn out well with her as a bodyguard. The story continues as crimes continue to take place around the neighborhood, and Bong-Soon, along with Min-Hyuk, wind up teaming together to fight crime and solve cases. Its a really intriguing, hilarious, and fantastic show, and really displays the creativity of Korean dramas and comedies. Its highly recommended.
A Brief, Recent History of Korean Media
The popularity of Korean dramas has soared over the recent years as a broad global interest in Korean food, music, film, pop stars, and other cultural exports has had a widespread rise. The Asian media has actually given a name to this, calling it “Hallyu“.
The spread of Korean pop and dramas throughout South, Southeast, and Eastern Asia was at the fore-front of the rise in Korean media popularity since the early 1990’s.
The liberalization of the media in Asia and the importation of Korean programs by the Chinese CCTV was what first showed how successful Korean entertainment could be. It sparked a huge boom for K-Drama across China. Since then, the Korean Wave, as they call it, has evolved from simply being a regional development into an entire global phenomenon, which has since been boosted by social media and the internet as a whole. Korean music videos have even aided in the popularization of K-Media.
In the last 1990s, just before the turn of the century, there was a major financial crisis around Asia. This led many media lovers to begin dabbling in Korean programming, because at the time it was a cheaper alternative. They discovered that even though it was less expensive, at less than half of the price of Hong Kong programming, it was not lacking in quality, but was actually in many ways better than what they were used to.
Ever since the early 2000’s, South Korea has steadily climbed its way to the top as a significant exporter of pop culture and tourism, which has actually become a large part of its economic boom.
The increase in popularity of Korean popular culture world-wide has even caused the government of South Korea to support the media industry with funding and subsidies for budding start-up businesses. A great deal of the Korean Wave’s success can be attributed to social media and social networking sites which gave rise to the Korean entertainment industry’s drama-hungry over seas audiences.
Over the years, the Korean film industry has had such a large interest in becoming a world-wide cultural phenomenon that it even went so far as to start learning from Hollywood, and even used that as a slogan for a while. They began promoting the media companies as a commercial market, which helped to spark interest from investors and really set things in motion to change the perception of such media to be a very real economic avenue.
The popularity of Korean drama speaks for themselves. Click image to view Viki TV’s “Viki Pass” free trial No Ads page.
Today, much in the case like Bollywood, it’s a thriving industry and something that users from around the globe are using to enhance their daily lives and find joy through incredible shows and movies.
Conclusion
If you are just now learning about Viki TV, or Korean dramas in general, you would definitely benefit from at least taking a trial of their premium services. No matter where you live, you’ll be able to find something that you will like on Viki TV, and it will probably already have the subtitles available for you to be able to understand the language of the show.
Compared to other media sites, it has far more content for you to enjoy, and you’ll wind up learning about other cultures in the process. You might even find something that hasn’t been subtitled in your language, and be able to contribute to the growing wealth of knowledge in media and help other uses to be able to enjoy the shows.
Its a wonderful community that crosses the borders between country and culture, and in this day-and-age, anything that brings people closer together is a positive thing. You can feel good about supporting Viki TV, knowing that you’re helping the world become a much better place to live in.
Head on over to Viki TV now and take a look as you won’t be disappointed. View their website link at Viki Pass for a free trail.
Considering Moving Abroad Like Thailand or Brazil? Then Follow This Plan
There are many individuals who have succeeded in leaving their native country in pursuit of another destination, and there are those who have attempted and failed. If you are seriously considering moving abroad, especially to the exotic country like Brazil, you are going to need a game plan.
Apart from getting your visa sorted out and purchasing airline tickets, a significant amount of preplanning is required to get you started with your new life in one of the most vibrant places in the world.
Don’t lose yourself in the excitement, and remember to adhere to the guidelines we are going to discuss below.
Save, Save and Save!
If you’ve made a move before, whether it is to another neighborhood or another city, it will take cash. Now that you’re considering moving to another country altogether, it’s going to take a lot more.
Think about it for a second and consider the many unique costs you’re likely to incur. Visa, legal clearances, shipping personal possessions, bit ticket purchases. These expenses are the ones you will incur before you even get there. Now let’s come to the living expenses when the wheels touchdown in the Promised Land.
If you are planning to start from scratch, then having at least about 5 to 8 months of living expenses is highly recommended. If you run out of money in a country where you don’t know the language or customs, it can be scary. Ensure that the financial aspect is covered before you even consider anything else.
Cost to Live A Comfortable Lifestyle in Thailand – According to Scott Mallon
Do you have a support group in your desired destination? While some solo expatriates have been able to establish themselves own their own, consider the option of seeking out a support system or group of global entrepreneurs who may assist in the process.
These groups may be found on traveler forums or through the social networks. During years of reading the experience of many expatriates, most will advise to first spend a few months in your target before making any final decision.
Tips about Brazil – According to Room In The Moon
And take into account, if such online group does not exist, you may need to use Facebook, Twitter or Google+ to start one of your own.
Check and Then Double Check Your Paperwork
When you’re in the process of preparing for your departure, you will be filling out a bunch of paperwork for both, the countries, the one you reside in and the one you intend to visit. Remember to make copies of every document that has your signature on it and every other legal and policy document that is signed to your name.
City lights of Thailand
Because pretty soon, you will be jumping through hoops for international money transfers, filling out tax information, obtaining health clearances, and if you are bringing along a family member, the relevant paper for them as well.
Long story short, do not get on the plane before you confirm, multiple times, that everything you need is there with you, along with backups should you lose the said documents.
Address Any And All Health Needs
Whenever one travels to another country, there is a slew of medical verifications you must go through before you become eligible for a visa. In the case of Brazil, being an exotic vacation destination, there are certain vaccinations and in some cases boosters you must be inoculated with before you become eligible. For that you will be requiring proof, so get the relevant paperwork from the lab or your doctor.
Create a Steady Stream of Online Income
Let’s be honest, moving abroad requires money. And when traveling overseas, the importance of having a sustained online business cannot be overlooked or over stated. Since you are going to need a lot of money to reach Brazil (or wherever) and get settled there, before you start earning again, if you have an online business it can help you stay liquid for the foreseeable future.
Such are the perks of being an online entrepreneur, even while traveling you can take your livelihood with you. We compiled an extensive list of ways to make money from the internet which one can read at this blog post.
Some forms of online income could be, but not excluded to:
Obviously, it should be noted that generating any amount of income, online or offline, varies per person, and dreams of becoming rich over night (if at all) should be left as just that- dreams.
Additionally, as with all areas of money making, it’s the hard work and effort one must put in before reaping anything significant. The idea of waking up to log on to your virtual work station (Laptop) at the comfort of your desired location is certainly a goal worth reaching.
However, it may require an enormous amount of “elbow grease” depending on your niche.
“as far as I’m concerned, I work 365 days in a year. So I’m working Christmas, morning, when people are sleeping, I’m up and I’m working….. I get up probably around 3:30-4:00 in the morning. And on a regular day, weekday, typical workday, I get up around 2:00 in the morning. And my days are usually somewhere around 12 to 15 hour days”.
Now in terms of finding work overseas, such as Brazil, it’s important to spend a few weeks or months on land to gather as much information as . Thus, once you’ve finally landed a job in Brazil, you will be pleased to find out that the local government regulations state that companies are required to pay their employees an extra month of salary at the year end. Imagine all you can do once you make the life you’ve been dreaming of.
A lot of the previous blog posts have dealt with investing and how technology and the internet have made things easier for the common woman and man. So it’s no surprise to introduce another concept: The Social Trader.
Social trading is a practice online investors employ to make financial decisions, in which they utilize user-generated financial content from sites such as Profit.ly and Etoro.com. Sites like these help the social trader to analyze financial data by supplying a common ground for copying and comparing trades, strategies, and techniques. Before social trading was possible, copy traders and investors had to rely solely on technical analysis to make investment decisions. Today’s social trading investors are able to trade data-feeds of social indicators online with other traders.
Social or copy trading allows online trading with the assistance of others. Many social traders claim that this ability greatly shortens the time necessary to move from being a novice to becoming an experienced Forex (Foreign Exchange Market) trader. All foreign currencies are traded in this over-the-counter market, which is the most liquid and biggest world market today. Social traders can watch others take trades, interact with other traders, and then copy, or duplicate, the most successful trades, and in the process learn why top performers choose the trades they do. By using copy trades, a new trader can learn what strategies work or what strategies don’t work.
What are some of the key features of social trading?
Transparency – By using trading platforms like InvestFeed or eToro, a social trader can find out the performance statistics of other traders, past and present positions, plus current market sentiment, which allows members all the information they need in order to appraise the site contributor’s credibility
Monetization -The ability to convert an object or asset into legal tender or money. It is possible for copy traders to learn a great variety of data about other users which will benefit them in the long run.
Cooperative trading – Through these online sites newer traders have the chance to work cooperatively in trading teams, pool funds, share information, and divide research up collaboratively.
Information flow – Social traders can benefit greatly by studying information exchanges that flow freely between financial investors. Freely exchanged information is valuable to individual investors.
How does copy trading compare to social trading?
Copy trading capabilities are available with assorted financial trading operators as one part of a bigger social trading platform. Copy trading permits financial market traders to automatically copy any positions that are managed or opened by a particular investor inside the social trading network. A portion of the funds of a copy trader is linked to a copied investor’s account. This means that all trades initiated by the investor being copied, like opening or closing positions, or assigning Take Profit and Stop Loss orders, will then be executed in the account of the copying trader, depending upon the allotted trading funds of the copier and the proportion of the investor’s account that is being copied. Copy traders usually have the right to disconnect from any copied trades and begin to manage these trades themselves.
A study of copy trades in 2012 demonstrated that traders who did copy trades on eToro with a “suggested investor” were 6 to 10% more successful than manual traders, and four percent more successful than copy traders of random investors. Research is on-going to fine tune a trader’s capacity to benefit sustainably from copy trading.
Social trading has become increasingly popular. Here is a listing of the most popular social trading networks available today:
eToro – This site is a social trading network as well as a broker and focuses on novice investors. New investors like this site’s simple mobile friendly interface A review of eToro can be found toward the end of this article
ZuluTrade – This site currently has the greatest number of investors and traders online. They provide complete trade copying plus social interaction capabilities
Ayondo – This German based site was the first to offer auto trading to UK customers in order to “spreadbet” Forex accounts. They offer stocks, indices, fx, bonds, interest rates, and commodities
Copyop – This is the most advanced and leading trading network for social binary options
CM Trading CopyKat – On this site you can copy and follow traders through a special “CopyKat” SIRIX trading platform. Members can mirror trades from everybody on SIRIX
Profit.ly – This huge website deals specifically with instructing people on penny trading ins and outs. This site offers email stock-pick alerts, SMS, plus a private chat-room where users can find help. A review of this copy trading site can be found immediately below.
Because they’ve become slightly more popular compared to the rest, we shall examine Profit.ly and eToro further:
Social Trading With Profit.ly
Profit.ly was created to introduce accountability, data-driven optimization, transparency and measurement into the world of online trading. Copy trades exist in abundance. However, concerns about stock manipulation as well as industry regulations sometimes prevent affiliates and members from being able to share information openly all the time. For this reason Profit.ly allows investors and traders to make private profiles where they can enjoy total account privacy.
Check the interview below:
This online site has advanced analytic tools which allow social traders to measure their performance, and at the same time make a knowledgeable analysis of which trade setups work the best for them. Traders can choose from various different products that include the capability to track profits, verify trades, get on leaderboards, message and follow other traders, plus view the stats of other traders for $29.95 a month. $49.95 a month allows a copy trader to make a private profile (but you won’t have access to other traders’ stats). The Pro level costs $74.95 a month and includes a private profile, as well as access to the statistics of other traders.
Profit.ly founder Timothy Sykes has made a career of exposing misinformation and fraud in the online guru and penny stock industries. A new feature of Profit.ly is called the “Bernie Madoff“, which allows community members to weed out and expose those traders that are possible liars.
Click image to visit Profit.ly, the Social Trading Platform
Social Trading With eToro
Founded by Jonathan Assia, eToro.com, “the Facebook of trading”, is currently the leading social trade network in the world (excluding the US). More than 5 million investors are using this social investment network. Opening an account with eToro gives you immediate access to CopyTrader, which advertises that members can choose to copy from more than 3 million traders. Once you open an account you can utilize their OpenBook platform for searching top social investors. When a potential trader to be copied is spotted, a user can allocate a part of their funds and begin copy trading. Any information that the copy trader submits is immediately protected by state-of-the-art encryption technology to ensure that your information won’t be shared with any third parties. A new account can be funded with PayPal, Moneygram, or credit card.
Click image to visit eToro, the world’s leading social trading network
One interesting feature of eToro is that if “popular traders” are copied, they’ll be rewarded. Depending on how many copiers a Popular Trader has, they’ll receive monthly fixed commission payments. The topmost “Elite” traders will receive annually 2% of all funds that are under their management, as well as totally commission free trading. In July of 2016 eToro updated their “Popular Investor Dashboard” to include a CRM (Customer Relationship Management System) which enables more interactions between copiers and Popular Investors. There’s currently more than 5 million users on eToro, which appeals to professional traders that are interested in making some extra cash for their trading skills.
To discover more details on the popular Social Trading platform, consider reading the full blog post review on eToro.
What is not so well known about the long running war between iPhone and Android is that India is where the battle between Apple, Google and Samsung is being played out, with frantic intensity. India is the world’s fastest growing smartphone market, according to Gartner, with smartphone sales growing by 166.8% this year and accounting for 53.6% of the new mobile devices sold this year.
Mobile Usage Challenges
India may have been slow at providing basic amenities for its people – still a large number of households in India, especially in rural Indian and in urban slums, do not have access to drinking water or proper toilets. Still, a significant percentage of Indian children suffer from malnutrition and in many ways, the country is still technologically backward, suffering from a creaking infrastructure. But if there is one area in which India shines, and shines really brightly, it is in the national mobile device usage.
There are 1.25 billion people in India and according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), India’s premier telecom regulator, there are as many as 933 million mobile phone connections in the country. Which means that the mobile device usage in India is particularly high for what is still a very poor country.
But that is not the full picture about the mobile device usage in India. The caveat here is that the number of unique mobile phone subscribers in India is actually less than half of the estimated number of 933 million total subscriptions. This is because Indian mobile phone users have an average of 2.5 sims registered in their names. While the sim penetration in India has reached almost 75% of the population, the mobile penetration has only reached 35%. There are more mobile phone subscriptions than mobile phone devices.
Promising Outlook For Mobile Usage
The anomaly is because the telecom market is highly competitive in the country, with half a dozen well established telecom companies battling it out for the attention of a vast population that grows richer and less poorer every year, and has more disposable income to spend, year after year. There is no question that many Indians are poor, but things are changing fast, and there is now no doubt that the country is on the right track. The fast growing mobile device usage in India is one of the biggest signs of a new wave of prosperity.
So to cater to the growing demands of a vast market, the big telecom companies in India, such as Airtel, Vodafone, Idea, Reliance and Tata DoCoMo and to survive the tough competition try trick in the trade to attract new customers, offering freebies and great deals for subscribing to their connections. This, coupled with the really cheap smartphones available in the country has spurred the mobile phone usage in India like nowhere else in the world.
The smartphone market in India is another huge success story. While there were 113 smartphones sold in the country by 2013, and proceeding year – in 2014 – the smartphone sales have been estimated to have increased by 166.8% – a truly remarkable growth. While iPhones are getting increasingly popular in India, the real battle for the attention of the Indian consumer is being played out by the various makers of Android phones. While Samsung still lords over the smartphone sales in India, it is facing great competition – not from Apple, Nokia or Lenovo – but from Indian manufacturers such as Micromax, Lava and Karbonn. Micromax has been a great local success story and its great success against Samsung has been widely covered in business publications in the country.
Facebook and YouTube are hugely popular in India and account for bulk of the internet usage on mobile devices. Facebook claims to have 100 million users in the country, of which 84 million are said to use it only through their mobile phones.
Another interesting fact which suggests just why mobile phone usage in India is so critical is that over 90% of Indian mobile phone users claim to do research on a particular product on their mobile devices before placing an order for it online.
Lastly, an overwhelming majority of mobile phone subscriptions in the country are pre-paid connections (93%). Not just poor or middle class Indians, even the rich prefer to have pre-paid connections because of the mistrust associated with postpaid subscriptions, where the telecom companies are known to make frequent mistakes with the billing.
Democratization by way of Technology and the Information Age
