FACT SHEET: m-Powerment for Women: The Role of Mobile Telephones in Inclusive Development

The Explosion of Mobile Phone Growth

·      The first billion mobile phones sold in 20 years, the second billion in 4 years, and the third billion in 2 years (Wireless Intelligence)

·      80% of the world’s population lives within range of cellular network (International Telecommunications Union)

·      68% of world’s mobile subscriptions are in the developing world (International Telecommunications Union)

·      Worldwide mobile phones reach twice as many people as landlines do

·      The number of mobile phone users has surpassed the number of people with personal computers and Internet access

·      There is more than one mobile phone for every two people on the planet, more than 3.3 billion mobile phones worldwide (Corbett)

·      More than three billion people, most of them living in Africa and Asia, still don’t own mobile phones (Corbett)

·      In 1998, there were no mobile phones in Morocco, 8 years later 24% of Moroccans owned a cell phone (Lasica)

·      From 1998 to 2006, cell phone subscriptions rose from 0 to 36% in Albania, 0 to 30% in Paraguay and 0 to 21% in China (Lasica)

·      By 2008, Afghanistan had 6 million phone subscribers, 5.4 million of whom owned cell phones (Gross)

·      Some 30 countries in the world have more mobile phone subscriptions than people (Adler)

·      In Afghanistan in 2002, phones cost $400 and airtime averaged $2 a minute; by 2008, mobile phones were less than $50 and minutes dropped to less than 10 cents (Gross)

·      In Sri Lanka, wireless companies’ average cost per user is $3 per month (Adler)

Aid for Women

·      120 million school-age children are deprived of education

·      60 million girls are not in school (Council on Foreign Relations)

·      100 million girls enrolled will leave before completing primary school (Council on Foreign Relations)

·      One in three girls completing primary school in Africa and South Asia cannot effectively read, write, or do simple arithmetic (Council on Foreign Relations)

·      Greg Mortenson’s efforts have resulted in over 131 schools with over 58,000 students in Pakistan and Afghanistan

·      10,000 organizations offer about $1 billion in micro-loans annually; but only reach somewhere between five to 10 percent of the world’s poor (Beshouri)

India

·      Almost half of the 1.2 billion people in India own a cell phone (Baja)

·      World’s fastest growing cellular market (Baja)

·      20 million new subscribers in one month (Baja)

·      Cellular industry is 2% of India’s GDP (Bajaj)

·      Most affordable cellular market in the world with an airtime cost of less than 1 cent per minute (Bajaj)

·      There are only 40 million landline subscribers in India (Bellman)

·      71 3G network licenses auctioned in May for a total of 11 billion dollars

·      40% of rural cell phone use is for business (Lasica)

·      80% of households on the bottom of the economic pyramid share one mobile phone (Adler)

·      More than a quarter of all handsets are second hand and cost around $20 (Adler)

·      90% of India’s mobile subscribers have prepaid plans and sometimes buy credit as low as 20 cents to keep lines open (Adler)

·      Average revenue per user is $6 compared to $50 in the U.S. (Adler)

·      Teledensity was 22 times higher in urban India than in rural areas in 2007 (Adler)

·      Some statistics show that more people in India have access to cell phones than to toilets (Cohen)

·      Biggest demand for cell phones comes from rural customers who typically make less than $1,000 a year (Bellman)

·      On average rural Indians use their phones around 8.5 hours a month (Bellman)

M-Commerce and Banking

·      In developing markets, only about 37% of the population has access to formal banking, while more than 50 percent have access to mobile phones (Beshouri)

·      For every 10,000 people, developing countries have one bank branch and 1 ATM but 5,100 cell phones (Beshouri)

·      1 billion people in emerging markets have a mobile phone but no access to banking services; by 2012 this population will reach 1.7 billion (GSMA)

·      45 million people without traditional bank accounts use mobile money, and this number could rise to 360 million by 2012 (GSMA)

·      In Bangladesh, 30 million people had mobile phones but only one million had ATM cards (Sullivan)

·      As of March 2008, a year after mobile banking was introduced, 1.6 million of the 20 million Kenyans had used the system to transfer $145 million (Sullivan)

·      Cambodia’s 300,000 garment workers regularly send half of their $20-30 salary home at transaction fees of up to 10%, mobile banking provides the service at much lower cost (Firpo)

·      Over the past year, over 150 mobile money services have launched around the world (GSMA)