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Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies

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Mobile and smartphone use in urban and rural India

Jerry Watkins , Kathi R. Kitner & Dina Mehta
a a b c

School of Humanities and Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney, Australia

b c

Intel Labs, Portland, OR, USA Convo Ltd, Mumbai, India

Version of record first published: 31 Aug 2012

To cite this article: Jerry Watkins, Kathi R. Kitner & Dina Mehta (2012): Mobile and smartphone use in urban and rural India, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 26:5, 685-697 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2012.706458

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Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies Vol. 26, No. 5, October 2012, 685697

Mobile and smartphone use in urban and rural India

Jerry Watkinsa*, Kathi R. Kitnerb and Dina Mehtac
a b

School of Humanities and Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney, Australia; Intel Labs, Portland, OR, USA; cConvo Ltd, Mumbai, India Between 32 and 74 million smartphones are forecast in the Indian market by 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. Thirtythree in-depth interviews were conducted with Mobile Only and Mobile Heavy users. A number of respondents reported that a mobile phone was their rst 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.

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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 gures 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 xed 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

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80 70 60 Units, millions 50 40 30 20 10 0 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 IDC (Q4, '10) Strategy analytics (Q1,'11)

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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 specic 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 dened 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 rm. Intel is a global technology rm 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

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76 38

41 14

10 2010 Mobile only 2015 PC and mobile PC only

Figure 2. Projected 2015% share of internet use in India by device. Note: 2010: 100% 81m users, 7% penetration of total population. 2015: 100% 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 lter 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 eld 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 denition of class is problematic in a multicultural corporate ethnography previous

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studies by Intel researchers use household income or the income of the head of household to dene class. In other situations, class is dened by a variety of factors, such as type of housing, income, and the number and types of consumer goods possessed. Nevertheless, these denitions cannot wholly account for respondents self-perception of social class, and rarely acknowledge peoples aspirations for shifting social class. For this particular study, as there is no ofcial denition 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 signicantly 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 , or a friends house. enabled computer at work, a cybercafe . 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 identication 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 reect 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).

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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 ows 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

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Table 1. Study A sampling design. Mobile only Type of Phone Belgaum Mumbai 2 2 2 6 2 10 8 10 3 21 Mobile Heavy Belgaum 2 1 1 2 0 2 2 2 2 2

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Mumbai 2 4 3 2 2 7 2 2 2 2

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Performance smartphone 2 Mainstream smartphone 1 Entry level smartphone 2 Feature phone w/ internet/GPRS 3 Feature phone no internet/GPRS 2 Total 8 Breakdown by Socioeconomic Class (SEC) SEC A 3 SEC B 6 SEC C 3 Total 12

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 researchers 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 ndings 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 eld 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 ndings 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 reected a basic shift by some respondents in perceiving the phone to be just about

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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 rst 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 reecting Mumbais 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 familys 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 reected in some part through ndings 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-today life. There has always been the hope in much of the development literature that ICTs would improve peoples 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 eld of media anthropology (Slater and Tacchi 2004) and states that the researcher needs to understand how a communication technology ts 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 technologicallymediated communication and content consumption t into wider meanings, uses, ows, and interactions (Skuse et al. 2007).

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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 specic to each initiative. This specicity 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 specic site of investigation in the eld. Within this context, intermediaries are dened 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 bottomup user-focused approaches. Previous eldwork 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 shermen 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 sherman 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 eld site: . A location with sufcient 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 stations mission is to provide community information and entertainment. Its programming features agriculture, folk songs and heritage, women-specic 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 ve 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,

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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.

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In contrast to Study A, the smartphone here was being considered not as a consumer device, but as a specic 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 nal site of investigation reected COLs interest in community media organizations as a tool for development communication. Study B commenced with organizational observation of Radio Bundelkhand operations by a eld 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 12) and community members (n 12). The organizational observation phase of the project served as preparation for two oneweek 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 ndings Following workshop training, the radio stations 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 Bundelkhands studio than the existing xed wireless network. This allowed Radio Bundelkhand staff to conduct the stations rst ever live music request show, followed shortly by its rst ever live agricultural programme. Agriculture is

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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 xed wireless provided 100% reliable voice connection). Previously these kind of live phone-ins were not possible due to the poor reliability of the studios existing xed wireless phone service. The smartphones facilitated SMS polling for the rst 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 selfidentied 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. Ofine, the smartphones served as an all-in-one audiovisual device for eld-based content capture and community engagement. Radio Bundelkhand staff found that the quality of the Nokia N97s 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 eld. 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 eld 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 insufcient 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 familys land. Battery life for low-cost handsets can be relatively short, and lack of access to electricity can be a signicant constraint to adoption of any consumer electronics in parts of rural India. For example, the

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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 nding 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 Bundelkhands 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 Bundelkhands 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 ofcers, 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 dened, 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 Bundelkhands reporters were not positioned to serve as intermediaries, as dened by the development communication context in which Study B was located. Based on the ndings from this specic site of investigation, it appeared that although smartphones and mobile networks might leapfrog a whole generation of xed 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

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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 specic 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 insufcient 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.

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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,

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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.

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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 rm, 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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