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    Mobile Phones: Focus on "Early Adopters"

Identifying the first group of early adopters may shed light for the development community on the types of people who might be more likely to use new technologies first or act as technical champions within their communities. In addition, analyzing early adopters' use patterns may shed light on how more recent users are likely to behave in the future. Tables 1 through 3 compare the 360 respondents (15 percent of the whole weighted sample or one quarter of mobile phone owners) who said they purchased their first mobile phone more than five years ago (prior to July 2004) to the 927 respondents (45 percent of the whole weighted sample) who purchased phones within the last five years.

Table 1 shows that most of the Kenyans to first purchase mobile phones were men, under 40, and at the higher end of the population in terms of income and education.

Table 1 
                        

Although the bias toward those under 40 is in part a result of the age structure of the sampled population, other characteristics result from higher rates of early adoption: men were more likely than women, urban residents (particularly in Nairobi) more likely than their rural counterparts, and those of higher socioeconomic status were more likely to be among the first phone owners.

Table 2 
                           

Groups with particularly low take-up rates (such as residents of the North Eastern Province, or people with no formal education) may therefore be less likely to adopt future new technologies when they are introduced. Development agencies may need to pay special attention to these groups when relying on new technologies.

Finally, Table 3 shows two relevant gaps: early adopters use their phones more intensively than those who bought phones more recently, and men on average use mobile phones more intensively than women do. Even among phone owners, therefore, there are many different profiles of mobile phone use.

Table 3