Cheap telephone connectivity has caused massive productivity and mobile market to flourish.
In India, people are conforming to this new trend and have developed unusual ways to use mobiles.
Here are 5 unique ways in which Indians use cellphones:
The trend of giving a missed call is very popular to save call costs. The caller gives a call which rings twice or thrice so that the receiver is not able to pick the phone deliberately, thus terminating the call. This is how the message gets passed without any charge or call rate. In fact, missed call has become a business in India. It is now a full fledged Rs 500-crore business with banks, FMCG corporates, political parties using this tool for customer feedback.
While individual consumers, especially of the pre-paid variety, 96% of India's 900 million mobile user base give a missed call to pass on mundane information like 'Have reached destination', or 'Call me back,' companies use this as a kind of Morse Code for customer feedback, saving millions of rupees in call centre charges and telephone bills. For instance, banks have adopted the missed call to find solutions to most common query of their customers account balance.
A rickshaw puller might own a cellphone but certainly, in a country like India poor people do not have electricity at home. Torch is the best way to lit up the room. When Nokia introduced the torch with the cellphone, it became an instant hit.
India has a wide network of radio industry. Many FM stations are operated by private companies as well as state run entities. Radio has a wide reach. So, the best source of entertainment for the poor and well offs is FM radio.
Smartphone apps have also been made. India's national radio broadcaster All India Radio has also introduced mobile apps to enable live radio streaming for smartphone users.
Many NGOs help farmers to listen to an audio version of the Youtube video. These videos are tutorials to the farmers for improving agricultural practices. Since, villages do not have access to internet, farmers can call up a number and request to listen to the audio clip of the video.
5. Scanner
Mobile camera is a very handy tool. Forms, voter id, passport size photo, identity card etc, all can be saved on a phone by using cellphone camera. Almost every official work is done online nowadays, soft copy of important documents should be handy. This is how mobile camera helps.