“Those seeking to be involved with the coming media revolutions that are bound to unfold in emerging economies such as India would be advised to leave behind the expectation that these regions shall merely come online or replicate industrial societies’ adoption and enthusiasm for the web as it exists today. This will not merely be a web 3.0 or a mobile 2.0. The world of mobile media in India by the end of this decade will be more richly immersive, multiply-mediated and nuanced, through subtle forms of gesture, moving, growing, shifting and changing at the rate of sociality itself.”

The Mobile Development Report offers a careful analysis of the social dynamics of mobile phone usage among urban and rural users from lower income backgrounds. It uses extensive qualitative case studies, rather than quantitative data, to explore the role that mobile phones play in the everyday lives of end users. These snapshots provide new insight into the ways in which new products, protocols and services could be designed to enhance the everyday lives of new rural adopters of mobile phones. New kinds of welfare and social services are proposed, in this study, on the basis of field findings.