While it is usually assumed that the advanced developed countries are the main influence in moving technology forward, this is changing as fast growing economies such as India are in fact driving new technological change. The rapid growth of mobile phone users in poorer countries has helped create new opportunities and ways to use mobile phones that are in some ways ahead of how we use them here. The poorer populations who have adopted mobile phones have bypassed land phones, and are using their phone effectively as a bank – income can be credited to a mobile phone and hence purchases for a wide array of goods and services are being made by mobile phone. Phones with inbuilt scanners can be used with smart scanners to pay for travel and increasingly a variety of other needs. We may have the iphone and ipad, but using the mobile device for even more functions is just around the corner….