Nokia taking a rural road to growth, By Kevin O’Brien, November 1, 2010, New York Times: “On Saturday at dawn, hundreds of farmers near Jhansi, an agricultural center in central India, received a succinct but potent text message on their cellphones: the current average wholesale price for 100 kilograms of tomatoes was 600 rupees. In a country where just 7 percent of the population have access to the Internet, such real-time market data is so valuable that the farmers are willing to pay $1.35 a month for the information. What is unusual about the service is the company selling it: Nokia, the Finnish cellphone leader, which unlike its rivals – Samsung, LG, Apple, Research In Motion and Sony Ericsson – is leveraging its size to focus on some of the world’s poorest consumers. Since 2009, 6.3 million people have signed up to pay Nokia for commodity data in India, China and Indonesia. On Tuesday, Nokia plans to announce it is expanding the program, called Life Tools, part of its Ovi mobile services business, to Nigeria…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty