FortySouth

Vivek Wadhwa of Businessweek notes a fact that many have already suspected – many highly skilled immigrants are leaving the US in large numbers to return to their home countries  for a better life and be close to family.

Why should Americans care?

Because immigrants are critical to the country’s long-term economic health. Despite the fact that they constitute only 12% of the U.S. population, immigrants have started 52% of Silicon Valley’s technology companies and contributed to more than 25% of our global patents. They make up 24% of the U.S. science and engineering workforce holding bachelor’s degrees and 47% of science and engineering workers who have PhDs. Immigrants have co-founded firms such as Google (GOOG), Intel (INTC), eBay (EBAY), and Yahoo! (YHOO).

I think this is one of those issues that’s always going to have an argument on both sides of the same coin – protectionism versus comprehensive immigration reform. Continue reading

The interest in mobile banking in developing countries has seen an exponential increase in recent years.

Why? Because, especially among African nations, it represents perhaps the perfect business opportunity – the confluence of the ubiquity of mobile phone subscribers and the fact that many yet do not own bank accounts. That notwithstanding, there’s the increasing need for financial transactions to occur in a secure, real-time and low-cost fashion.

To this end, the GSM Association and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are working together under the Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) Program to “fund regulatory and market research to help overcome some of the barriers of providing these services and demonstrate the business case for serving this market”.

I think once such a business case is made to banking regulators, the process of approval for mobile service providers to provide these services may be hastened because they won’t feel like they’re groping in the dark in this new policy area.

Once the regulatory hurdles are surmounted, the onus will be on mobile network operators to provide value-added services and focus on service delivery.

Gartner Inc. has released a report of mobile technologies that will be quickly evolving over the next two years that may pose some issues on short-term strategies and policies.

• Bluetooth 3.0 – Likely to be released in 2009 with compatible devices becoming available in 2010. Will feature low power consumption and faster transfer rates up to 480Mbits/s in close proximity.
• Mobile User Interface – Organizations should expect more user demands for support of specific device models driven by interface preferences. They will also be an area of intense competition in 2009 and 2010, with manufacturers using UIs to differentiate their handsets and platforms. Continue reading