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Comment by arc_of_descent | Hacker News Reader

Most of rural India does not even have electricity. I wonder how they are going to charge their Android Ones.

Apparently 70% of India has electricity. I imagine the smartphone will sell mostly to those who have it. Though off the grid I guess they could get a solar charger in principle.

70% of physical area or people? I'm finding it hard to get good stats. If 70% of people then that means almost no rural coverage.

Here is a district-wise map of percentage of rural households with a. electrical lighting and b. mobiles. http://imgur.com/A7PXuwa

Surprisingly, they don't overlap. Numbers are from the 2011 census. Interactive version at: https://bl.ocks.org/ganeshv/raw/fada13e56d2c5b7b1a78/

I was thinking 70% of people. That figure is actually my guestimate based on:

"In December 2011, over 300 million Indian citizens had no access to frequent electricity. Over one third of India's rural population lacked electricity, as did 6% of the urban population." (Wikipedia)

Checking 2011 article "The rural-urban distribution is 68.84 per cent and 31.16 per cent respectively" (The Hindu)

Multiplying those by 1/3 and 6%, that would make it 75% had electricity around 2011 and presumably a bit more now.

When I worked in the phone industry in India (2007) there were definitely communities that had near-complete phone adoption and near-zero electricity in the home. You don't need electricity to the home to charge a phone.

I assume you're talking about landline phones.

No, mobile phones. People charged them off diesel generators, hand generators, etc. There were in fact small-scale entrepreneurs who bicycled around to everyone's house, gathered up the phones, and returned them charged for a small fee.

This works pretty well for Nokia 1100 style phones which had about a week or so of battery life which many people extend to a month by turning them off judiciously.

If that indeed is the case, having cheap mobiles which people WANT to use, will probably divert PEOPLE's attention towards good supply of electricity throught out the country.

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