Mobile India could lead the world

India could become the first mobile digital society. Although just 7 percent of its people currently have Web access, Indians consume—offline—an average of 4.5 hours of digital content daily. By charging fees to load it onto mobile devices, some businesses in effect serve as physical iTunes stores, a market estimated at more than $4 billion a year. If demand were unleashed through the mobile Internet, McKinsey research forecasts, the number of users would soar to 450 million by 2015, and digital-content consumption would rise as high as $9.5 billion. To learn how the country could blaze a trail for other developing markets, read “Can India lead the mobile-Internet revolution?” (February 2011). Also of Interest April 2011 How new Internet standards will finally deliver a mobile revolution As the Web experience evolves, smartphones may soon live up to their name, and every business’s mobile strategy will grow in importance. August 2007 Tracking the growth of India’s middle class Over the next two decades, it will rise from about 5 percent of the population to more than 40 percent, creating the world’s fifth-largest consumer market.[includes audio and interactive] September 2005 Winning the Indian consumer Multinationals that successfully adapt their products to the country’s largely untapped market will have the advantage. February 2005 The right passage to India Companies attracted to the country’s potential must do more than merely transplant products and systems that have succeeded elsewhere. [includes audio]

Did you miss last month’s Chart Focus? A coming credit crunch? The new roads, ports, and other infrastructure that developing countries need will cost vast sums of money. A recent McKinsey Global Institute analysis finds that as a result, by 2030 the supply of capital will fall short of demand to the tune of $2.4 trillion—slowing global GDP growth by one percentage point a year, even if China and India cool off. Businesses and investors must adapt to a new era in which capital costs more and most of it goes to the world’s developing regions.