No consumer technology has spread as fast around the world, and no widely available consumer device has ever allowed consumers to connect with each other so easily as the mobile phone. This is true not only of consumers in developed markets. Mobility of communication and computing power is dramatically improving connectedness and opening new market opportunities in developing economies, where the falling costs of mobile telephony have accelerated adoption in low-income areas. According to the World Bank, for example, every 10 additional mobile phones per 100 people in a typical developing nation results in GDP growth of roughly 0.8%. “We have also seen a shift in the banking sector,” says Kelly Beaver, a principal consultant at Coffey International Development Limited, an international development consulting company. “Where previously there was a large proportion of unbanked in sub-Saharan African countries, that proportion is changing as a result of mobile telephony.”