Abstract:

The fast development of mobile telephony in many countries has surprised many forecasters. However based on the results presented here we believe that using a value-based approach could have reduced the gap between projections and market reality especially when taking a mid-term view. In the paper we show that from a socio-cultural perspective we find three groups of countries. The three groups also define three levels of mobile phone penetration. The results are based on joint quantitative surveys carried out by RISC and Ericsson Mobile Communications in twenty-one countries throughout the world from 1996 to 1998.