60 million mobile phones is a lot of…
by Jim Rosenberg: Thursday, August 23, 2007
…potential access points for payment services.
It also happens to be the number of handsets that Nokia has manufactured in India in the 18 months since its operation openned in Chennai, according to numbers released Thursday in New Delhi. Those phones are not just for India or its neighbors, as LiveMint reports:
Kallasvuo said the firm exports nearly half of its Indian unit’s production, comprising low and mid-end GSM phones, to 58 countries in South-East Asia, Africa and West Asia. The firm started the plant to assemble entry-level handsets, mainly for the local market, and started exporting phones produced there only in mid-2006. Higher-end models, such as the Nseries are still not manufactured in India.
Meanwhile, more than one-third of Indians responding to a survey of Asian consumers said they would consider switching to a bank that offered mobile banking services. As the Economic Times reports:
Among Indians, 49% of respondents to the survey claim to actively use their mobiles to check their bank balance, well above corresponding figures of 13% for Australia and 9% for China.
Seems like the days of subscriber trunk dialing are a bit numbered.
