Microsoft is looking at alternatives to ultra-low-cost laptops in the drive to arm people in developing nations with a way to communicate and access the Internet, and the company is turning its sights on cheaper devices that can give people a start in computing, such as smartphones and shared computing.

The world's largest software maker has a few projects in the making, including a push to use mobile phones in computing and microfinance. Mobile phones have already made an impact in nations across the developing world, from India to Zimbabwe, enabling people such as farmers and fishermen to find better markets and prices. Handsets also give a person a way to be reached for jobs.

"Technologies like the mobile phone promise to take things like very small loans, microfinance, and allow them to operate in a very efficient infrastructure so that the price and the availability of financial products can be far broader, reaching out to everyone in society," said Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, in a speech at the Jakarta Convention Center last week. "We haven't achieved that yet, but that's an area where Microsoft and my foundation are working on and investing very heavily."

Microfinance is important because people in developing nations don't often have access to loans, and when they do, they face interest rates as high as 20 percent to 30 percent a day to loan sharks. The microfinance trend was made famous by Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.

Identity and billing are benefits of tying mobile phones to finance products. A mobile phone provides an identity, and cellular network operators can be part of the microfinance process through their billing processes.

One of the reasons companies are looking more to mobile phones for developing nations is because of the huge number of handset users worldwide, estimated at 3 billion, and widespread network coverage. Nearly 90 percent of the global population is covered by a mobile phone network, according to information from the GSM Association and CDMA Development Group.

Handsets are so popular in developing nations that those countries are finding novel ways to use the technology. For example, in Indonesia, a nation of 230 million people spread across 17,000 islands, the government has started allowing certain services and bill payments over mobile phones. The president of the country even set up a mobile phone number, 9949, so people can SMS (short message service) to communicate directly with him.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.