India and the smartphone

Report in McKinsey ($ registration required) that examines how India may become the world's first mobile digital society. The large population, population density, emphasis on education and on learning English, and the embrace of the mobile phone will continue to empower India and the Indian diaspora, which will strengthen their connections back home.

Obviously, PCs are too costly for many. Corruption remains widespread. Infrastructure problems are many. Still, with all the country has to offer and the embrace of the mobile, India could point the way to our future:

India could become the first mobile digital society.

Although just 7 percent of its people currently have Web access, Indians consume—offline—an average of 4.5 hours of digital content daily.

By charging fees to load it onto mobile devices, some businesses in effect serve as physical iTunes stores, a market estimated at more than $4 billion a year.

If demand were unleashed through the mobile Internet, McKinsey research forecasts, the number of users would soar to 450 million by 2015, and digital-content consumption would rise as high as $9.5 billion.