When considering the technological innovations of the past fifty years, the Internet is probably the one that has had the greatest impact on everyday life. The near universal reach of mobile telephony in developing countries means that mobile phones will be the dominant means to access the Internet. There are now 5.3 billion mobile subscriptions globally, of which more than 3 billion are in developing countries. Even in remote villages without power, people can find access to a phone. These phones are becoming more and more powerful and, according to Gartner, ?By 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common web access device worldwide.?

India?s mobile and internet achievements are a study in contrast. While there were 785 million mobile subscribers in February 2011, the corresponding numbers for Internet and broadband were 20 million and 12 million, respectively. Net additions in broadband subscribers are merely 0.2 to 0.3 million per month compared to around 15 million mobile connections. In other developing countries, too, there are many more mobile phones than Internet connections. In Brazil, Russia, China, Indonesia and India (the so-called BRICI countries), there are 610 million regular Internet users, but a staggering 1.8 billion mobile-phone connections, according to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In a report called The Internet?s New Billion, BCG predicts that by 2015 there will be 1.2 billion Internet users in these countries?dwarfing the total in America and Japan.

These new internet users in India, therefore, will mostly log on via their mobile phones. This is because it tends to be cheaper and easier than any other option. Besides, mobile phones independent of the Internet are delivering enormous value. There is now incontrovertible evidence of mobiles being used in ways that contribute to productivity enhancement. For example, farmers use price information available on the mobile to exploit the price disparities to their advantage. Layers of intermediaries can be dramatically reduced, if not eliminated altogether. More recently, innovations such as geo-location technologies and social networks have begun to transform accountability loops in a number of different ways. These innovations allow citizens to participate and demand better citizen services. The role of technology in improving accountability is part of a broader trend of empowerment through more open development.

Mobile applications (including access to the Internet) are expected to make significant contributions to economic and social development in India over the next five years. Vigorous competition among service providers in India led to aggressive pricing that made it affordable for lower income classes to own and use a mobile phone. In addition, in some cases, it was easy to demonstrate that the mobile paid for itself. Thus, for the self-employed and many others, the mobile was not only the only form of connectivity but also an instrument for cost savings and revenue enhancement.

Using this connectivity to deliver an enhanced array of services will be a lot more challenging in the future. Moving to the next level will not only mean greater coverage but more wide-ranging applications that deliver innovative services like m-commerce, m-health, m-education, m-entertainment etc. Innovations are likely to be the key to usher in the new era of digital society in India.

Globally, mobile apps, the small applications that can be downloaded to smart-phones to access social networks, play games and music, have already taken off. Apple recently announced that its App Store now offers 225,000 apps, which collectively have been downloaded 5 billion times. Android Market, the storefront for the operating system that powers many smart-phones, now has 60,000 apps and is catching up fast. And GetJar, an independent mobile store that offers programs for all kinds of handsets, claims 72,000 apps and 1 billion downloads. In a recent study, Juniper Research put 2010 revenues from mobile apps at nearly $10 billion and estimated that these will more than treble by 2015.

In India, the focus of innovations in mobile telephony naturally has to be beyond entertainment. It is not to say that entertainment will not be a prominent application, in fact, it already is, but modern mobile systems hold the promise of helping the poor in radical and game changing ways in the developing world. For example, M-pesa in Kenya is a mobile banking solution that has caught the imagination of development professionals as is now being replicated in a number of countries as part of the ?financial inclusion? initiative. Again in Kenya, evidence of m-health?s usefulness is shown by something as simple as sending text messages to remind Kenyan patients to take their HIV drugs. This alone improved adherence to the therapy by 12%.

There is no doubt that local ideas will provide a fillip to innovation. Victoria Hausman of Dalberg, a development consultancy, has surveyed dozens of m-health business models in Haiti, India and Kenya in her work for the World Bank. She predicts that mobile banking, which has already taken off in Kenya, will be a great enabler of m-health. Firms are coming up with ways for patients to pay doctors, receive subsidy vouchers and so on, using their phones. According to Bill Gates, ?Middle-income countries are where most innovation in health care is going to come from.?

Crowdsourcing is another method that has become increasingly wide-spread and powerful to help solve problems in ?distributed? ways.??Crowdsourcing? is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor to a large group of people or community (a crowd). The task therefore is to create an ecosystem around which contextual and meaningful innovations can flourish and deliver value. While the market itself will cater to some needs, an enabling policy environment can go a long way in helping the process along.

The author is a professor at International Management Institute