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The next billion mobile users will rely on video and voice

Tech companies are rethinking products for the developing world, creating new winners and losers

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Some poor users say they are willing to pay for data even if it means forgoing consumption of things like cigarettes to afford prepaid cards

Eric Bellman | WSJ

Last Updated : Aug 09 2017 | 1:58 AM IST

The internet’s global expansion is entering a new phase, and it looks decidedly unlike the last one.

Instead of typing searches and emails, a wave of newcomers—“the next billion,” the tech industry calls them—is avoiding text, using voice activation and communicating with images. They are a swath of the world’s less-educated, online for the first time thanks to low-end smartphones, cheap data plans and intuitive apps that let them navigate despite poor literacy.

Incumbent tech companies are finding they must rethink their products for these newcomers and face local competitors that have been quicker to figure them out. “We are seeing a

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