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In Mobile Applications (1) I listed and shared screenshots of the 40+ apps currently running on my phone, a Samsung Blackjack, ranging from the usual PIM (personal information management) to multimedia and productivity tools.

This one blog though, Mobile Applications (2), starts from a fairly different angle. Most people would figure that only “privileged corporate citizens” in wealthy economies can afford smart phones and their sophisticated mobile apps. It does not need to be that way. Let me first share what motivated me to write about this:

“The world’s poorest nations must place more emphasis on using scientific knowledge and technological innovation if they wish to escape the poverty and growing unemployment they currently face”.

“The warning comes in a major report — ‘The Least Developed Countries Report 2007: Knowledge, Technology Learning and Innovation for Development’ — published on July 19th by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), based in Geneva”.

Read David Dickson’s article on Science and Development Network.

LDCs, otherwise known as “least developed countries”, would benefit from what the report calls “knowledge-aid“. The issue being: donor nations focus on managing financial aid and monitoring governance without allocating enough resources to local human capital to create and sustain much of the needed growth. 

This goes back to the saying about ”give a man a fish, and you’ve given him a meal; teach him to fish, and he’ll have food for a lifetime” which, to be frank, I thought of being the guiding principle behind most aid programs.

The problem is that LDC’s educational systems have not achieved critical mass and, in any case, brain-drain impacts their chances to get any better as professionals and people with higher education emigrate to wealthier economies.

I would like to take this chance to bring back my blog on Gartner’s report about how emerging markets happen to be innovating and leapfrogging western economies. This is not just India and China, but some African countries happen to be using wireless technologies to their people’s advantage.

The World Bank’s definition of an emerging economy includes countries with low-to-middle per capita income, Tunisia being another example. These are no LCDs though, but countries which have embarked on economic development and comprehensive reform programs, opening up their markets and “emerging” onto the global scene. These are fast growing economies by any standards.

In any case, Mobility is often seen as one way to provide Internet access in countries were fixed infrastructure is not widespread. Motorola’s Zander has stated that developing economies have forced new directions in handset and application design, including screen technology that can be read in bright sunlight and voice activated commands for illiterate users. He is also quoted saying:

“The first fallacy is that people buy low price devices as many people in India are buying high price devices… You have to design for that market. People don’t just want cheap devices”.

Nonetheless, the OLPC program, one laptop per child, will deliver sub $100 laptops to take down today’s digital divide. I will get back to this further down in this blog.

Admittedly, I’m with Bill Gates view on the fact that some of these efforts (referring to the OLPC) could be far more effective by leveraging the growing computer power, storage capacity, wireless connectivity and affordability (e.g. economies of scale) provided by mobile phones.

Earlier in the year, at Davos, Gates and Microsoft CTO Craig J. Mundie talked up the idea of a specially designed smartphone, one which would be connected to a TV and keyboard, thus becoming a fully functional personal computer since “Everyone is going to have a cellphone“. By the way, as a side note, Nokia is already positioning the N95 as “what personal computers have become”.

At the end of the day, this might not be a matter of choosing between one or the other (e.g. phone vs. laptop) but about making them work together. As a reference I would suggest having a look at my blog on how my mobile phone happens to be my 3G modem. Furthermore, lets have a look at MojoPac. This product was the recipient of a DemoGod award last year and an Always On award just a couple of weeks ago (among some other). This is what it does:

“MojoPac empowers you to turn any computer into your personal computer, regardless of what applications are installed on that PC”.

“With MojoPac consumers can carry the contents of an entire PC on any portable storage device, such as an iPod, cell phone or USB flash drive, and connect to any PC worldwide to access and work with the contents”.

“MojoPac supports all applications, including iTunes, PC games like World of Warcraft and work applications like Microsoft Office”.

Note that a new software category is now emerging, the so-called “portable apps“, which have been optimized to be run from USB keys or flash memory cards in phones for that matter.

One example would be the complete OpenOffice.org office suite compatible with Microsoft’s Office, including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing and database.

Packaged as a portable app, you can also take all your documents and everything you need without carrying anything that would not fit in your pocket.

My point being we can get our smartphones to free us from carry our laptops around and to get them to become a tool leveraged by educators and students. See my thinking on reconditioning used smartphones further down.

Going back to the OLPC initiative: obviously, affordability is a critical factor (e.g. the laptop’s hardware and software cost, power consumption, distribution, etc).

These computers run on open source software (Linux) and have been designed to network on location. A thousand of them could share just a couple of land based Internet connections to begin with. As far as power consumption, they can be powered up manually if needed:

“The yellow crank, while cute, in the end proved impractical; it migrated to the AC adapter as it also morphed into one or more other types of human-power devices. Its status as an icon for OLPC would be supplanted by the mesh-network antennas, or “ears.” OLPC blog.

As far as using a phone instead… would OpenMoko be the answer?

This is an an Open Source project to create the world’s first free mobile phone operating system: the OpenMoko Linux.

Alternatively, should these phones leverage an open source version of Windows CE, as Bill Gates advocates? Personally, I don’t know the answer, I’m just glad to see that there is no lack of options.

In any case, the developer’s version of FIC’s Neo Base retails for $300 (a consumer model will be made available in October): GPRS/GMS (2.5G wireless data), A-GPS (location) Bluetooth (personal area network, about 100 meters), and a USB port. This phone will also feature a 2.8 inch VGA touchscreen.

Back in May, Popular Science, the magazine, calls it the iPhone’s open source rival, more explicitly on page 6 you can read “the smartphone that makes the iPhone look dump”.

This first version of the OpenMoko phone is missing broadband connectivity though. Nonetheless, Bluetooth can be leveraged to tap into other devices connected to the Internet. In my view, it does show the potential to evolve into affordable smart phone for the mass market, as well as a tool worth considering in the scope of this discussion.

After having written about what I think is possible and within reach, I need to remind myself that I started this blog talking about LCDs (e.g. Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia) which the United Nations define as follows:

• low-income criterion: gross national income (GNI) per capita under $900;
• human resource weakness criterion: involving a composite Human Assets Index (HAI) based on indicators of: (a) nutrition; (b) health; (c) education; and (d) adult literacy;
• economic vulnerability criterion: involving a composite Economic Vulnerability Index (EVI) based on indicators of: (a) the instability of agricultural production; (b) the instability of exports of goods and services; (c) the economic importance of non-traditional activities (share of manufacturing and modern services in GDP); (d) merchandise export concentration; and (e) the handicap of economic smallness (as measured through the population in logarithm); and the percentage of population displaced by natural disasters.

OLPC’s mission starts by sharing that “most of the nearly two–billion children in the developing world are inadequately educated, or receive no education at all. One in three does not complete the fifth grade”.

The Least Developed Countries Report 2007 corroborates this view by focusing on knowledge accumulation, technological learning and the ability to innovate as “vital processes toward genuine productive capacity development in these countries”.

I was ready to post this blog (meaning finishing it) while thinking of the value of reconditioning used smartphones (e.g. placing them in small rugged cases and adding some drivers and software such as Soonr) which might also be of help.

They can be used to create an add hoc local network via Bluetooth interacting with the classroom’s computer as well as with peripherals such as keyboards and monitors. They can get the power to keep goingfrom the same kind of human-powered devices used by OLPC if need to.

So, I spent just a couple of minutes figuring out how much it would cost to get the smart phone I used to carry with me a few years ago. It is not longer manufactured. I went to eBay where it can be purchased for $20-$50 from various sellers. Originally, the SMT 5600 retailed for $300+ (that was the price tag without the applicable discount when signing for a two year plan).

I still have this GPRS - Bluetooth device, which is fully functional. It is running Windows Mobile 5.0, the Microsoft’s PIM apps and DocumentsToGo (a mobile office suite compatible with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), plus a 512Mb swappable flash memory card and featuring a USB port. In “flight mode” (switches off the radio, meaning no cellular service) I could still use it as a handy PDA and music player.

Long story short, it makes me wonder if someone has already started a program to put this kind of “handy computing devices” to work for those who might actually need them the most. Please let me know if you were aware of anything to that effect by leaving your comment below. Thanks in advance.

José de Francisco Lopez Chicago, 21 July 07

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This blog’s Long Tail:

• Mobile Applications (1)
• Emerging markets are driving innovation
• PC phones in education and everywhere else
• Use your phone as a 3G modem
• Ergofuturo: Project Cosm

References and picture credits:

• Science Development
• Your Next Computer on MSNBC
• 8 Ways to use camera phones in education
• One Laptop Per Child
• Intel’s Classmate PC
• Microsoft would put poor online by cellphone
• Openmoko.org and Openmoko.com
• MojoPack demo and MojoPack.com
• Portable OpenOffice for USB
• Portableapps.com
• Soonr

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