Emerging economies could benefit greatly from access to mobile communications, and these same markets will prove vital to the global digital economy in years to come, according to two separate studies.
A study by Oxford Economics showed the top seven emerging markets – Brazil, Russia, India, China, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey, will hold a bigger share of world GDP than the G7 by 2020.
The year 2020 will see twice as many companies in the emerging world than the advanced markets increase investment by 20% or more in mobile devices, social media, business intelligence, collaborative technologies and telepresence.
With 73% of the world’s mobile usage currently coming from emerging markets, the Oxford study predicts these markets will increasingly open opportunities for vendors in the west.
With public spending in Brazil, Russia, India and China expected to increase twice as fast than the US, Japan, Germany and France by 2020, Oxford Economics predicts devices could be increasingly tailored first to the needs of the developing world, before rollout in the developed world.
This shift of technology from west to east is expecting to boost emerging market growth and subsequently consumer income and demand.
A separate study by the World Economic Forum and Alcatel-Lucent, which covered the mobile scenes in developing countries, found an increase in mobile communications access in such markets could accelerate GDP growth by up to 36%.