In Argentina, Cell Phones Trump Credit Cards

With 380 million mobile user in Latin America and just 3 major carriers, monopoly-related problems are the norm to say the least. During the ad:tech Miami panel Mobile Advertising in Latin America: When Will it Be a Reality, the lack of a common platform, as is the case in other markets, is always a hurdle that must be jumped during mobile campaign creation.

On the panel were Moderator, Fernando Pafumi, director of business development for Pyramid Research, Victor Kong, VP of Strategy and New Media for MTVNetworks Latin America, Jorge Oartides, CEO of LatCel and Juan Saldivar.

Many wireless carriers have not yet implemented 3G capability limiting the abilities of marketers to fully implement services such as music, gaming, social networking and other emerging features.

Saldivar made the interesting observation that there's a 20- 1, phone to credit card ratio in Argentina which is actually a boon for the mobile market's mobile commerce initiatives.