Smart Phone in Rural India

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Mobile and smartphone use in urban and rural India
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DOI: 10.1080/10304312.2012.706458
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Mobile and smartphone use in urban

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Jerry Watkins , Kathi R. Kitner & Dina Mehta
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b
Intel Labs, Portland, OR, USA
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Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies
Vol. 26, No. 5, October 2012, 685–697
Mobile and smartphone use in urban and rural India

Jerry Watkinsa*, Kathi R. Kitnerb and Dina Mehtac
a
School of Humanities and Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney, Australia;
b
Intel Labs, Portland, OR, USA; cConvo Ltd, Mumbai, India
Between 32 and 74 million smartphones are forecast in the Indian market by

Downloaded by [University of Western Sydney Ward] at 20:26 04 September 2012
2015.This article looks more closely into this phenomenon by comparing two studies
conducted at urban and rural sites in India. Study A was based upon a corporate
ethnography of ‘middle class’ urban user segments in Mumbai and Belgaum. Thirty-
three in-depth interviews were conducted with ‘Mobile Only’ and ‘Mobile Heavy’
users. A number of respondents reported that a mobile phone was their first ‘personal’
device, which led to a complex relationship between the user and their phone that
was manifest both physically and symbolically. Study B details a development
communication project based upon a six-month participant observation of a community
radio station located in the rural Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh state. The
strategic aim of Study B was to explore the potential of the smartphone as a tool for
development communication. Nokia N97 smartphones were provided to community
radio reporters and these devices facilitated the production of new programming and
innovative community engagement pilots. Both studies suggest that low levels of
income and digital literacy, and certain social structures and cultural norms may further
constrain forecast adoption rates. However, the studies also demonstrate the range of
new possibilities afforded by mobile- and smartphone-enabled applications and
services once such constraints are reduced or removed.
Background
For those seeking evidence of a shift in social and cultural behaviours facilitated by mobile
technologies, consider this estimate: by 2015, four major regions (sub-Saharan Africa,
Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East) and 40 countries will have more people
with mobile network access than with access to electricity at home. This off-grid, on-net
population will reach 138 million by 2015. The same research forecasts that the number of
mobile-only users – who only access the internet via mobile phone – is estimated to grow
56-fold from 14 million at the end of 2010 to 788 million at the end of 2015 (Cisco 2011).
In this near-term future where mobile networks are more commonplace than electricity,
Indian users will feature heavily. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India figures estimate
approximately 850 million wireless subscribers in India at 30 June 2011, against a total
national population of 1.2 billion (Census India 2011).
Figure 1 compares two studies which forecast between 32 and 74 million smartphones
in the Indian market by 2015 (IDC 2010; Strategy Analytics 2011). This high number
contrasts with a relatively sober 7– 10% estimated adoption rate of fixed and portable ICT
devices such as desktop or laptop computers (Gartner 2010; Narasimhan 2011). Based on
the impact of planned 3G infrastructure increases, market analysts McKinsey forecast that
*Corresponding author. Email: j.watkins@uws.edu.au
ISSN 1030-4312 print/ISSN 1469-3666 online

q 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2012.706458
http://www.tandfonline.com
686 J. Watkins et al.
80
IDC (Q4, '10)

70 Strategy analytics (Q1,'11)
60
Units, millions
50
40
30
20
10
0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Figure 1. Forecast of smartphone units in the Indian market. Note: Indicates between 32 and 74
million by 2015. Does not include feature phones. Sources: IDC 2010; Strategy Analytics 2011.
by 2015, 41% of internet access in India will be via mobile device/smartphone only
(Narasimhan 2011, see Figure 2). Yet lack of reliable and affordable 3G/4G infrastructure
currently hinders broader smartphone adoption. Without the higher quality and faster
transmission rates of 3G, many of the distinctive features of a smartphone – such as
downloadable apps or premium content – are lost.
Although compelling in their own right, none of these quantitative studies are designed to
return qualitative data on the motivations, desires, and cultural context of current and future
smartphone users. These kinds of qualitative data provide a more complete understanding of
the multiple economic and cultural factors that impact not just device penetration, but also
the design and implementation of smartphone-enabled applications, services, and content.
The two studies described in this article were designed to investigate specific factors that may
impact smartphone adoption and usage, rather than come to a generalizable outcome.
Study A: Urban users

Study A was entitled ‘Smartphones Anywhere: Hyper-connected Mobility in India’ and
investigated urban smartphone and ‘feature’ phone users in the Indian cities of Mumbai
and Belgaum. In this context, feature phones are defined as phones with applications other
than voice, but distinct from ‘smart’ phones in that functionality is limited in terms of both
screen resolution and network access.
Study A was a collaboration between the research division and mobility groups of
Intel Corporation and a Mumbai-based research firm. Intel is a global technology firm
which maintains an interest in different countries and cultures to better understand everyday
lives and experiences in varying markets. Various Intel research teams use ‘corporate
ethnography’ as part of an ‘applied anthropology’ approach. Although both terms are
contested, corporate ethnography is increasingly practiced by industry and is bound more
strictly by parameters of focus, time, and distance than academic ethnography. These
parameters demand different methodologies, which are regularly debated within the
Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 687
21
76
38
41
14
10
2010 2015
Mobile only PC and mobile PC only
Figure 2. Projected 2015% share of internet use in India by device. Note: 2010: 100% ¼ 81m
users, 7% penetration of total population. 2015: 100% ¼ 450m users, 35% penetration of total
population. Source: Narasimhan 2011.
profession and the discipline (e.g. Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference, Society for
Applied Anthropology blogs).
Within the technology sector, ethnographers began to filter into research and consulting
positions in the late 1980s and have continued to grow in number (Cefkin 2010). Their role
has been to research the complex intersections between technology and human life in order
to guide future strategies regarding the design of products or services (Bell 2011). There are
a growing number of examples of academic scholars collaborating with corporate
researchers in the field and via publication, and through project funding (Watkins, Tacchi
and Kiran 2009; Kitner, Tacchi and Crawford 2010).
The objective of Study A was to generate qualitative data on how ‘middle class’ user
segments in Indian cities were using smartphones and other connected mobile devices, to
better understand what these users might desire and aspire to in terms of their technology
consumption in the near- and medium-term future. It is recognized that an appropriate
definition of ‘class’ is problematic in a multicultural corporate ethnography – previous
studies by Intel researchers use household income or the income of the head of household
to define class. In other situations, class is defined by a variety of factors, such as type of
housing, income, and the number and types of consumer goods possessed. Nevertheless,
these definitions cannot wholly account for respondents’ self-perception of social class,
and rarely acknowledge people’s aspirations for shifting social class. For this particular
study, as there is no official definition of the middle class in India, Study B used the
measurement of income and education of the head of household, realizing its limitations.
Two main research questions were asked:
(1) Are mobiles/smartphones used differently across different genders and/or social
and economic groups in India, and if so, how?
(2) Is mobile/smartphone use by the target segments in India significantly different to

other cultural settings? What is similar, or different?
The second research question refers to previous comparable studies undertaken by Intel
researchers at sites in USA and China, and also anticipates future studies at other locations.
This approach to gathering varied cultural understandings of the same problem is termed
‘multi-sited ethnography’ (Marcus 1995). Using an ethnographic approach, the
researchers conducted home-based interviews with 33 smartphone and feature phone
users in two cities. Respondents were categorized according to internet and device usage
patterns as either Mobile Only or Mobile Heavy:
. Mobile Only user: accessed internet and internet-supported services only through
their mobile phone and did not have a computer at home. Might use an internet-
enabled computer at work, a cybercafé, or a friend’s house.
. Mobile Heavy user: used an internet-enabled computer at home, work etc., but also
accessed internet via phone on a regular basis.
Participants were male and female between 18 –35 years old. Due to network access issues
and cultural and economic practices that tend to favour males with slightly higher
disposable income and closer identification with technology in general, it was anticipated
that most respondents would be from the middle- to upper-economic classes in urban
areas, and that the sample would skew towards younger males. In response, participants
were selected for gender balance and to reflect a range of middle-class incomes and
occupations in India. Participants were selected from Mumbai (population over 21
million) and the town of Belgaum in northern Karnataka state (population approximately
one million). These two urban sites were chosen to contrast differences in culture,
aspirations, and infrastructure between a major city and a smaller town.
Following primary segmentation by location, gender, and class, participants were
categorized by the type of phone they owned during the study (Table 1 below summarizes
the sampling design):
. Performance (e.g. iPhone or other high-end smartphone);
. Mainstream (e.g. Blackberry);
. Entry level (e.g. Micromax or other inexpensive smartphone);
. Feature phone (more commonplace device used primarily for voice and SMS).
The primary method was ethnographic depth interview conducted at participants’ homes.
Questions were designed to gather responses on the underlying daily practices that framed
how respondents access, use, and create flows of information, data, entertainment, and
social connections. For example, were there differences between mobile-only users and
those who were heavily connected to other devices? What did respondents hope to do with
Table 1. Study A sampling design.
Mobile only Mobile Heavy

Type of Phone Belgaum Mumbai Belgaum Mumbai
Performance smartphone 2 2 2 2
Mainstream smartphone 1 2 1 4
Entry level smartphone 2 2 1 3
Feature phone w/ internet/GPRS 3 6 2 2
Feature phone no internet/GPRS 2 2 0 2
Total 8 10 2 7
Breakdown by Socioeconomic Class (SEC)
SEC A 3 8 2 2
SEC B 6 10 2 2
SEC C 3 3 2 2
Total 12 21 2 2
Note: Shows user categorization and socioeconomic class (SEC) breakdown. SEC A is highest income, and SEC
C is lowest of the sample.
their phone, and who or what did they aspire to become in the years ahead? What were the
wider problems they encountered in their lives?
The aim of these broader questions was to reveal ‘threads of meaning’ that can emerge
from a deep qualitative knowledge of everyday life and interaction with technology.
Threads of meaning can also be understood as cultural themes and as large memes such as
class, gender, religion, or social structure. The threads of meaning that derive from those
larger concepts are locally and historically situated, and – once uncovered – help to
illuminate the ethnographic researcher’s knowledge of daily lives.
Each interview was supported by additional activities whereby respondents created
personal scrapbooks, conducted online homework assignments, and attended a participatory
workshop in each city after the interviews had been completed. These workshops consisted
of researchers and participants working together to interpret, question, cluster, brainstorm,
and iterate findings and insights from the interviews by co-creating stories, personas, the
ideal device, use cases, narratives, and scenarios. The research team used a ‘blography’ to
share and store research materials including summaries and preliminary analysis,
scrapbooks, annotated pictures, videos, diaries, and interview transcripts. This secure,
shared Content Management System allowed the research team to collaborate from a
distance in real time. The field research team was comprised of Intel researchers and an
interviewer/translator. Interviews began in April 2011 in Mumbai, followed by Belgaum.
The interview process lasted approximately two weeks, and the participatory workshops
were held shortly after the interviews.
Study A: Key findings

Mumbai respondents felt that the rapid growth of the Indian economy had accelerated life
not only on the streets of Mumbai, but also in smaller villages and more remote areas.
Within this context, the mobile device (smart or not) was considered a necessity by almost
all: rural migrants to the city; middle-class housewives; and a bank account manager and
other professionals. One respondent explained how, ‘When I thought I had lost my phone,
I felt like someone had cut off my arm!’. This description of the mobile as part of the body
reflected a basic shift by some respondents in perceiving the phone to be ‘just’ about
talking or SMS texting, but rather as becoming an essential tool – something very
personal, fundamental, and intimate (Donner 2009, 91). For a number of respondents, the
mobile phone was their first ‘personal’ device, something owned only by them and never
shared like a bicycle or clothing. This particular characteristic reinforced the perceived
importance of the phone.
Study A also found that the mobile phone created a certain type of privacy that we
refer to as intimacy, and this intimacy has led to a change in the perception of personal
space and increased freedom. This was true for both male and female respondents,
but more pronounced in Mumbai than Belgaum, perhaps reflecting Mumbai’s dense living
conditions both at home and in public. Furthermore, this increase in temporal and spatial
freedom afforded by the mobile phone is slowly changing gender roles. One young woman
explained how the mobile phone has changed her social life with relation to physical space
in Mumbai. She wakes early, grabs her phone to Facebook her school friends to meet her
at the bus stop, relieving her brother of the need to accompany her. Later in the day she
realizes she will need to stay late at school and calls home to tell her parents. Now that she
has her mobile, she is allowed to stay out past the previous 8pm curfew. This increases her
study hours at school and adds to her knowledge of the town at night. Once home, she sits
in the crowded main room of her family’s apartment and chats online with a new boy she
met earlier in the day. While her physical space is crowded, her social space has expanded
dramatically through the intimate privacy offered through her phone.
Similarly, a high school student in Belgaum patted the phone securely lodged in his
trouser pocket and said, ‘it is like having my girlfriend in here’. For both these young adult
respondents, their mobile device now embodies this new intimacy and permits unsupervised
personal relationships, in some contrast to older generations (an issue which was reflected in
some part through findings from Study B, below).
The story of the young woman told above was neither singular nor unique to the
respondents to Study A. Intimacy built through mobile communications is beginning to
shift the constraints that, for example, women in India have encountered in their day-to-
day life. There has always been the hope in much of the development literature that ICTs
would improve people’s lives by giving them access to a large system of information that
would somehow allow them to improve their economic status. In contrast, respondents to
Study A indicated that a rich life means more than just income, and that freedom and the
ability to form intimate and trusting relationships is important – an ability that can be
supported by the feature phone and smartphone.
Study B: Rural intermediaries

The strategic aim of Study B was to look beyond traditional design issues relating to ICT for
development systems (such as online access and network bandwidth) in order to consider
sociotechnical issues impacting mobile information, content, and services adoption in the
development communication context. To facilitate this strategic aim, the research design of
Study B was formulated within the conceptual framework of the ‘communicative ecology’.
The communicative ecology approach emerged from the field of media anthropology
(Slater and Tacchi 2004) and states that the researcher needs to understand how a
communication technology fits into wider contexts, in order to understand any single aspect
of that technology within a particular setting. Communicative ecology is supported by
ethnographic mapping tools which allow the researcher to understand how technologically-
mediated communication and content consumption fit into wider meanings, uses, flows, and
interactions (Skuse et al. 2007).
Study B extended an earlier review of development communication initiatives featuring

mobile devices and mobile-friendly content (Watkins 2009). This review found that the
design of earlier development mobile communication programmes was usually specific to
each initiative. This specificity makes precise comparison between sites of investigation
problematic, and limits the validity of a quantitative and/or statistical research design in this
instance. Therefore a qualitative research design was adopted by Study B in order to return
data on grassroots usage of mobile devices and content by human intermediaries at a specific
site of investigation in the field. Within this context, intermediaries are defined as human
agents who provide an interface between end-users and systems supported by information
and communication technology (Watkins, Tacchi and Kiran 2009). Intermediaries are a key
factor in the design of sociotechnical systems to support development communication
objectives, and are sometimes overlooked by either top-down policy frameworks or bottom-
up user-focused approaches. Previous fieldwork by the research team throughout South and
Southeast Asia has demonstrated how rural and regional development communication
infrastructure projects are challenged by a lack of available intermediaries who can
facilitate engagement between new information and communication technologies and
marginalized community members and groups (Watkins and Tacchi 2008).
It is worth noting here that this view of intermediaries as a positive factor within a
communicative ecology is in contrast to a number of studies from the development
communication sector. Some of these indicate that specialized interfaces and systems
supported by mobile devices can allow individual farmers or fishermen to access real-time
local market information and therefore get the best prices for their produce. In so doing,
the mobile device allows the farmer or fisherman to bypass intermediary traders and avoid
associated mark-ups – literally ‘cutting out the middleman’ (see, for example, Gandhi,
Mittal and Tripathi 2009). Based on the aim of the research design and the preceding
studies, three criteria were established to inform selection of the field site:
. A location with sufficient network coverage and associated infrastructure;
. A host organization with a development communication agenda such as a NGO or
community centre, with established links to underserved communities;
. Staff, volunteers, etc., who functioned as intermediaries with experience in digital
content creation methods using portable and mobile devices.
The site of investigation chosen was Radio Bundelkhand (RB), a community radio
organization situated on the border of the states of Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Uttar
Pradesh (UP). This region experiences comparatively high levels of poverty. RB was
launched in 2008 by a Delhi-based non-governmental organization and the station’s
mission is to provide community information and entertainment. Its programming features
agriculture, folk songs and heritage, women-specific content, job information, and
advertising. Many villagers in the region use Hindi-based language dialect, customs, and
traditions. RB started FM broadcast on 23 October 2008 and its broadcast range covers 25
villages and a total population of approximately 15,000 (Kiran 2010).
The station employs five reporters and six community coordinators and for the
purposes of Study B these participants were framed as human intermediaries who actively
engaged at the grassroots level with local villages. For example, station reporters would
regularly convene village meetings at locations which had no radio reception. During these
‘narrowcasting’ sessions (a term used by community and local media organizations in
south Asia) reporters would play back previously broadcast programmes to the village
meeting, and record comments and vox pops from the assembled villagers in order to
provide content for follow-up programmes. Through initiatives such as narrowcasting,
the station reporters could play an important role in building grassroots engagement with
the radio station.
As part of Study B, Radio Bundelkhand reporters were provided with three Nokia N97
smartphones by the research team to support the existing grassroots participatory content
creation activities of the radio station. These activities included radio phone-ins, interview
recording, video recording, and SMS mailouts. Hands-on training was provided to the RB
teams on the use of the N97 smartphones and bundled applications. The Nokia N97 unit
was selected for a number of reasons:
. Build quality, Hindi font options;
. Retail availability, choice of mobile networks and tariffs;
. High quality camera, video and audio recorder;

. Slide-out physical QWERTY keyboard to facilitate SMS and web browsing.
In contrast to Study A, the smartphone here was being considered not as a consumer device,
but as a specific tool for development communication and grassroots content generation, to
be used by trained intermediaries. In normal circumstances these smartphones and their
tariffs would be too expensive for use by either the radio station or its staff. However,
handset and tariff costs were funded throughout the period of the research project. Study B
was supported by Commonwealth of Learning (COL), an intergovernmental agency
based in Vancouver, BC, with a focus on education and development. COL has proposed
that community media organizations can function as intermediary organizations in
the dissemination of audiovisual content for educational programmes to marginalized
communities. The selection of Radio Bundelkhand as the final site of investigation
reflected COL’s interest in community media organizations as a tool for development
communication.
Study B commenced with organizational observation of Radio Bundelkhand
operations by a field researcher. The purpose of the observation was to look for potential
applications of mobile devices, applications and content that could bring about community
development and social change at the site of investigation. An ethnographic orientation
was adopted which looked beyond immediate issues of access and use in order to consider
how mobile systems would be relevant to community development. Seven research visits
were made between March and July 2010, during which the research team observed the
sites of investigation and conducted semi-structured interviews with RB and DA staff
(n ¼ 12) and community members (n ¼ 12).
The organizational observation phase of the project served as preparation for two one-
week training workshops on participatory mobile content creation methods facilitated
by the smartphone device and its bundled applications. The training workshops were
conducted at Radio Bundelkhand and were attended by RB staff and invited community
members. The workshops were facilitated by a two-person research team with experience
in action research and participatory content creation methods.
Study B: Key findings

Following workshop training, the radio station’s reporters used the Nokia N97 smartphones
to test a range of new community radio programme and production initiatives. The most
evident impact of the smartphones was that the mobile network provider enabled a more
reliable phone service to Radio Bundelkhand’s studio than the existing fixed wireless
network. This allowed Radio Bundelkhand staff to conduct the station’s first ever live music
request show, followed shortly by its first ever live agricultural programme. Agriculture is
the main industry of the region and farming experts were patched into a live Q&A by
hooking a N97 straight into the studio mixer (although neither smartphone nor fixed
wireless provided 100% reliable voice connection). Previously these kind of live phone-ins
were not possible due to the poor reliability of the studio’s existing fixed wireless phone
service.
The smartphones facilitated SMS polling for the first time, using mobile numbers
collected by station staff through previous community engagement activities. Radio
Bundelkhand staff sent a simple question about a recent cultural programme to female
listeners. Prior to this pilot poll, the RB station manager had assumed that female listeners
might be less willing to respond to SMS communication from a community radio station
due to perceived cultural and gender barriers prevalent in some local villages. This valid
assumption was proved wrong by a number of responses to the poll received from self-
identified female listeners. It was intended as part of Study B to extend the complexity of
the SMS polling initiative by using the Freedom Fone audio browsing system. However at
the time of the study, the Nokia N97 device was not compatible with the Freedom Fone
software.
Offline, the smartphones served as an all-in-one audiovisual device for field-based
content capture and community engagement. Radio Bundelkhand staff found that the
quality of the Nokia N97’s audio recorder and stills and video camera was often better than
the consumer audiovisual equipment they had been using to conduct interviews and make
recordings in the field. Reporters felt that the smartphones were less obtrusive than a
microphone and MP3 recorder and made villagers feel more comfortable during interview
recording. However, the same reporters indicated that the smartphones themselves attracted
quite a lot of attention from villagers, which made it easier to strike up conversations during
field visits.
A workshop in participatory content creation was attended by station reporters, studio
staff, and selected community members. The aim of the workshop was to explore
how village-based community groups could actively participate in programme planning
activities in collaboration with the community radio station. As part of the workshop, the
research team facilitated a communicative ecology mapping exercise with three young adult
community members (1 x M, 2 x F) from local villages. As part of this exercise, each of the
three villagers charted his/her daily activity schedule and socialization patterns, and then
mapped this schedule to their daily interactions with content, media, and communication
technology.
This mapping exercise produced a detailed report on the impact of mobile content
and devices on the life of the respondent and his/her family, friends, and colleagues.
The communicative ecology mapping technique also avoids more explicit device- or
content-oriented enquiry methods – such as user/device testing or media survey – which
can return datasets that are overly focused on device usage or content consumption, with
insufficient consideration of other communication behaviours and socialization patterns.
Produced by community members during the workshop, the communicative ecology maps
indicated that the young adult community members had access to their own mobile phones
and used these frequently in the early morning and later evening, often to listen to music
broadcast by local commercial FM radio.
One of the respondents came from a comparatively well-off family whose agricultural
land was served with electrical supply, allowing her to listen to radio via her phone
throughout the day even when working on her family’s land. Battery life for low-cost
handsets can be relatively short, and lack of access to electricity can be a significant
constraint to adoption of any consumer electronics in parts of rural India. For example, the
research team visited one rural village in which many households had a low-cost mobile
phone, but were unable to charge them since the village had lost its mains electricity
supply some months previously.
Another unexpected finding from the communicative ecology mapping was that the
regular daily schedule of the three villagers meant that they were usually busy with family,
work, or school activities at exactly the time slots when Radio Bundelkhand programming
was broadcast (in common with numerous community media organizations, Radio
Bundelkhand’s operating budget restricted it to transmitting during the morning and early
evening only).
The online capability of the smartphone devices was not tested during Study
B. Existing access by Radio Bundelkhand staff was available only through a slow and
intermittent connection via two desktop PCs located at the studio. The Nokia N97s were
supplied to station reporters with a tariff that permitted full online access, and the research
team requested that Radio Bundelkhand’s reporters should test online browsing to support
secondary research for story ideas. However, online access was not activated throughout
the duration of Study B. The station manager decided that it would be inappropriate for
staff members – most of whom were young adults – to have unsupervised access to web
content. This instance provides a valuable contrast to the embodied intimacy associated
with the mobile device observed in Study A.
Three pilot participatory current affairs-style programmes were co-created by
reporters and community members during the workshop. In a ‘traditional’ news and
current affairs generation model, an editor might instruct reporters to build a story on a
selected theme. The reporter then shapes the story using input from experts, government
officers, and local residents. This content is assembled, packaged, and broadcast. In
contrast, the participatory content creation technique tested at Radio Bundelkhand
featured the co-development of grassroots stories by station reporters working alongside
the three local villagers attending the workshop. The villagers themselves acted as
reporters and hosted a small focus group composed of friends and family in their
home village. The focus group was interviewed over mobile phone by a studio-based
reporter.
This participatory method was designed to demonstrate to Radio Bundelkhand staff how
they could engage community members more directly in content creation activities, in line
with their community media mandate. However, the initiative was not continued by Radio
Bundelkhand reporters, who indicated during a later debrief that they were unfamiliar and
uncomfortable with the direct and active involvement of community members in
programme-planning activities. This response demonstrated how the reporters preferred not
to engage in community co-development at the grassroots level, but instead maintained a
more defined, one-way relationship in which their function was to ‘capture’ input from
villagers. This relationship could be considered to be more akin to mainstream media
practice and to this extent it was concluded that Radio Bundelkhand’s reporters were not
positioned to serve as intermediaries, as defined by the development communication
context in which Study B was located.
Based on the findings from this specific site of investigation, it appeared that although
smartphones and mobile networks might leapfrog a whole generation of fixed line technology
in rural India and elsewhere, they will not by inference leapfrog a whole generation of
familiar radio production formats which lie at the core of the Radio Bundelkhand operation.
Indeed, the rigid programme schedule which is essential to traditional broadcasters (local,
community, and mainstream) does not easily absorb the opportunities for downloadable or
interactive mobile audio content enabled by mobile devices and smartphones. Due to the
embargo on online access via smartphone at Radio Bundelkhand, it was not possible to test
these opportunities during Study B.
Conclusion
Study A recorded a number of responses which suggested how the mobile device or
smartphone have embodied intimacy for some users. For example, some young people had
access to a far wider range of relations and communications via voice, SMS, and social
networks than were previously available in a pre-mobile world. The notion of intimacy
was reinforced by further responses which indicated that greater personal online access
has changed the concept of personal space. This was true for both male and female
respondents, and the increase in temporal and spatial freedom afforded by the mobile
device – and the relationships it supports – is slowly changing gender roles.
In contrast, the restriction to online access for the Nokia N97 smartphones observed
during Study B might indicate how cultural norms and social hierarchies continue to erect
barriers to adoption, alongside lower income and digital literacy skills. None of the
activities conducted at Radio Bundelkhand during Study B demonstrate general
innovation in comparison to existing practices in urban/developed contexts. However, the
smartphone-enabled activities conducted by reporters and studio staff demonstrate specific
innovation to previous working practice at the site of investigation. This study reinforces
how mobile or wireless networks and devices can enhance or leapfrog wired
infrastructure, and thereby allow users in underserved areas (urban, regional, or rural)
to generate content and consume services previously unavailable.
The two studies described in this paper come from different perspectives and modes of
operation. Study A is situated in corporate technology research and development, while
Study B is situated in the realm of development agencies and communication programmes.
While the ethnographic methods and research design for both studies were not identical, both
asked the same general research questions around how and why smartphones might be useful
to – and used by – different segments, and what the constraints to smartphone adoption by
these segments might be. In so doing, this article indicates how the mobile and the
smartphone are supplanting the personal computer as the standard online access point, and
the potential impact that the evolving smartphone device and its necessary high-bandwidth
network will have on individuals and groups within developing economies (Sen 2010).
The 2010 McKinsey report forecast 450 million internet users in India by 2015 with
41% of these using a mobile device only (see Figure 2 above). However 3G infrastructure
is currently insufficient to reliably support premium content access and app download –
two of the key features of the smartphone – and the medium-term future will be shaped by
infrastructure reliability and rollout, and handset and tariff costs. 4G and LTE network
technology are unlikely to be implemented substantially by 2015 (McKinsey 2010).
Therefore it is quite conceivable that higher-end mobile phones and feature phones will
remain dominant over smartphones for some time. Even if smartphone adoption in India is
limited to higher-income urban user segments, manufacturers and content providers may
still anticipate a substantial market niche.
Acknowledgements
Study A was funded by Intel Labs and the Ultra Mobile Group of Intel Corporation, based in Santa
Clara, California, USA. Thanks to the contributors to this project. Study B was funded by
Commonwealth of Learning, an intergovernmental development agency based in Vancouver, BC,
Canada. Thanks to Radio Bundelkhand staff and local community members who participated in the
study.
Notes on contributors
Jerry Watkins is Associate Professor of Design at University of Western Sydney, Australia. He
researches the impact of mobile devices, broadband, social media, and ICT for development. He has
provided strategic communication consultancy to companies including AT&T Wireless, Deutsche
Telekom, Telecom Italia, and Vodafone Group.
Kathi R. Kitner is a cultural anthropologist with Intel Labs Interaction and Experience Research
(IXR) group. She has recently completed research into class, consumption, shifting world
economies, and technology adoption in the project Consumerization (see http://papr.intel-research.

net/svm.htm).
Dina Mehta is a qualitative researcher with 20 years experience, based in Mumbai, India. In 1998 she
set up her own consultancy firm, MOSOCI, to conduct comprehensive qualitative research on
brands, products, and services. Recent work has led her to rural markets and trend-setting youth in
urban settings.
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Mobile and smartphone use in urban and rural India

Article in Continuum · October 2012

Jerry Watkins Kathi Kitner

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Mobile and smartphone use in urban

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Mobile and smartphone use in urban and rural India

Between 32 and 74 million smartphones are forecast in the Indian market by

*Corresponding author. Email: j.watkins@uws.edu.au

ISSN 1030-4312 print/ISSN 1469-3666 online

IDC (Q4, '10)

Study A: Urban users

Mobile only PC and mobile PC only

(2) Is mobile/smartphone use by the target segments in India significantly different to

Table 1. Study A sampling design.

Mobile only Mobile Heavy

Study A: Key findings

Study B: Rural intermediaries

Study B extended an earlier review of development communication initiatives featuring

. High quality camera, video and audio recorder;

Study B: Key findings

economies, and technology adoption in the project Consumerization (see http://papr.intel-research.

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