How the Cloud Can Enable Shared Phones For Millions

For residents in emerging countries, where income can be under a dollar per day, a handset purchase is considered a luxury. Dual SIM handsets from Nokia and others are targeted for these specific markets, allowing two people to share the same phone. That's one solution, but it pales in scope next to what Movirtu offers with its MX Share platform, which leverages the cloud to make millions of mobiles potentially sharable among a number of different people.

With MX Share, subscribers purchase airtime minutes, services and their own phone number, even if they have no phone. Using either a pay phone or someone else's handset, a subscriber can log-in to their phone account to place prepaid calls, send text messages or check voicemail. No special handset or other hardware is required. Essentially, the model is similar to sharing a computer through multiple accounts; sign in to get your data and use the device. The key difference is that the account management enabling handset use is handled in the cloud, not on the individual device. Discovery likens the approach to using web-based email, another communications method that people can use on practically any web-connected computing device.