Mobile phones lifting the world’s economies: report
By Joe McKendrick | November 27, 2012
The proliferation and adoption of mobile phones is having a tangible and measurable impact on the growth of many of the world’s national and regional economies. These devices are the lever that is lifting the world.
A new study estimates that a doubling of mobile data use leads to an increase of 0.5 percentage points in the GDP per capita growth rate across selected 14 countries, and that countries with higher level of data usage per 3G connections have seen increases in GDP per capita growth exceeding a percentage point.
These findings come from an assessment just released by the GSM Association and Deloitte, which looked at the incremental benefits of next-generation mobile telephony services, such as 3G technology and mobile data services, and their impact on economic growth. “Mobile services have the potential to impact economic development further through the provision of high-value 3G and 4G data services accessed via smartphones, tablets and dongles that deliver mobile data services to businesses and consumers,” the report states.
The report draws from research of data usage and economic growth across 14 countries provided by Cisco Systems based on their Visual Networking Index (VNI), as well as Deloitte studies on the productivity impact of mobile in 79 countries and the impact of 3G penetration across 96 countries.
Continue reading “SmartPlanet: Mobile Phones Lifting Global Economy”
