CES: Mobility Key to Developing Countries, Nokia Says

By Marisa Taylor

Nokia’s chief executive challenged developers Friday to create new mobile applications that would enhance the lives and productivity of people in developing countries, for a reward of a $1 million investment from the company.

Associated Press

Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo gives his keynote speech at CES on Friday.

“In the real world, far away from here, these little devices have already done more to improve lives at the base of society’s pyramid than perhaps any other technology in history,” Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo told a crowded auditorium during his keynote speech at CES. The cellphone company’s competition, dubbed Calling All Innovators, will kick off in February, and the winner will be announced in June, he said.

For many people across the world, primary access to the Internet would come through their mobile phones and not from personal computers. The goal, then, is to make basic cellphones more affordable, he said, because “they have, in fact, become a necessity for upward mobility.”

For example, while there are 4.6 billion mobile phone subscriptions across the world, there are only 1.6 billion bank accounts. So Nokia will launch its Money apps during the first half of 2010, Mr. Kallasvuo said, so users can manage their finances and make mobile payments without having to travel long distances or wait hours in line at banks.

And while 75% of the world’s population doesn’t have access to email, Nokia’s app store, Ovi, now offers a free email service. Five million people signed up for accounts in its first year, he said.

“Mobile apps have been big in bringing hope and higher living standards to millions of people,” said Mr. Kallasvuo. “This trend promises to accelerate in the coming decade as the capabilities of the smart phones spread across the globe.”

Nokia’s roving cultural anthropologist Jan Chipcase, whom Mr. Kallasvuo jokingly referred to as the company’s Indiana Jones, also took the stage to explain how the company observes consumer habits in places like Afghanistan, India, China and Brazil. Mr. Chipcase said the company sought to learn from the adaptations people had made, because “scarcity is what leads to real innovation.”

“Once objects become small enough to fit in a pocket, they rapidly find a way around the globe,” he said. Mobile manufacturers, then, should know that they’re competing with the best in the world. “That’s now the benchmark for these consumers,” he said.