I’ve been having a lot of mobile moments lately - catching up on the world in mobile and mobile in the world. Sometimes, the cultural divide on mobile really comes crashing home.

I’ve written before about how in Japan, six of the top ten best selling books were written (yes, written) on a mobile phone, and God knows how many are consumed on them. Yet, here in Australia, the whole eBook industry is so nascent and underdeveloped - you wonder if it is the same world. I’ve heard about people (in the US) who think that their Kindle comes with all the books preloaded - and are trying to hack into the Kindle to ‘unlock’ the rest of the books for nothing. You wonder if they have heard of 3G and fast downloads and things like that…

OK, so books aside, the one that really got me these last few weeks were from South Africa and India - two nations worth keeping a close mobile eye on for different behaviour that might just teach us something.

In South Africa, most people are on pre-paid. And, like all pre-paid customers, they run out of credit. In many countries, this is where you make a call to your mate, hang up, and hope they have the credit to call you back. But in South Africa, a special (advertiser funded) service lets you send a couple of texts to people for the price of you (and your recipients) attention). Yep - ads get sent along with your text to the recipient and to you. It doesn’t work forever, but for long enough to get a couple of critical messages off to people. So is it any real surprise that 60% of the mobile advertising in South Africa is generated from these services? I feel like we have a long way to go to take this medium serious. And that is despite a comment from Eric Schmidt in August last year saying:
“We can make more money in mobile than we do in the desktop eventually… and the reason is the
mobile computer is more targeted. Think about it: you carry your phone, and your phone knows all
about you…we can do a very, very targeted ad. Over time we will make more money from mobile
advertising.”

So, on to India.

I’ve had my mobile phone number for just over ten years. It hasn’t changed in all that time. For ages, I was trapped in an inappropriate contract with a relatively inefficient (at the time) carrier. When number portability finally arrived, I was thrilled! Within three years I’d travelled around three carriers and no-one was any the wiser for who I was with. The prefix on my number no longer gave away who I had signed up with as it did in the earlier days. I would hazard a guess that for many of you - the situation is the same - our number is, in part, our identity. We might have more than one, but we would rarely dream of ditching them.

Not so in India. This highly mobile (as in movable) and mobile savvy (as in tech aware) audience will happily toss one carrier for another who offers them a better price. A SIM (and a number) is only as good as the deal of the day. I gather that for many, the first call/texts they send are to update their friends as to their new number.

I keep looking at the 12- and 24-month plans we have and wonder if there is a message in this for either India (stitch them up for longer) or for our carriers (eventually we will be free. Watch this space I guess!