Towards next generation mobile applications for MOPS : investigating emerging patterns to derive future requirements

![CDATA[During last few decades, mobile phone usage in the world has grown rapidly and it has become the most popular form of electronic communication. Depending on the connectivity, the world population can be classified in to a 3-layred pyramid. At the top there are about 1.5 billion users who have access to modern networks using their computers and Smartphones. There are about 2 billion people at the bottom of the pyramid who have no means of communication. At the middle of the pyramid (MOP) there are about 3 billion people who have mobile phones but are not part of the modern internet. Most of these people are living in the developing countries. Developing suitable mobile phone applications for MOPs to become part of the next generation networks, has positive implications from technology, business, as well as humanitarian perspectives. This also opens up a very large new market segment. We researched emerging patterns to derive broader requirements for developing next generation of mobile applications for MOPs. Though developing countries use mobile phones mainly for voice calls and sending text messages, research indicates that there will be affordable Smartphones for MOPs in the future. This factor is further supported by the mobile growth in the developing countries. Currently, 90% of the world population is covered by a mobile signal, 76% of the world population has a mobile subscription and that of developing countries is 67%. Researchers have started to develop mobile applications for MOPs in areas of health, education, agriculture, fisheries and mobile banking with the aim of improving their livelihood. We also identified connectivity and empowerment provided in Web 2.0 based applications were major reasons for the rapid growth of the social networking and micro blogging web applications. Ways to aggregate micro blogs to derive real-time information is emerging. This capability is very important to develop applications that provide information on prevailing market prices and demand to a fisherman or a farmer, or the demand for a service to a bricklayer, a carpenter or a taxi driver. Based on our research findings, next generation of mobile phone applications for MOPs can be based on Smartphones. These applications should empower them to be information users as well as information producers. The information provided by the users need to be intelligently aggregated to identify useful information related to their livelihoods in near real time. Such applications would result in up lifting of economic conditions of the MOPs and transformation of social processes.]]