The mobile phone and not the Personal Computer, has become the device which democratizes information and communication and liberates much of mankind from poverty.
With 4.6 billion connections from 6.8 billion people, the mobile phone now touches two thirds of humanity, and as Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said in his keynote at CES, “for the majority of the world’s people, their first and only access to the Internet will be through a mobile device, not a PC, and this access is spreading very, very fast.
In China, every month more than 7 million people gain access to the Internet for the first time, and mostly on mobile devices.
This trend shows no signs of slowing. The mobile device has become a necessity for upward mobility.” Kallasvuo used his platform to announce the “Nokia Growth Economy Venture Challenge” – a USD 1 million fund to encourage developers to come up with innovative software to accelerate development in these growth markets.