India’s Bharti Airtel will become the fifth-largest telecom provider in the world by purchasing 15 African markets from Zain in deal valued at $10.7 billion, according to Wireless Intelligence. Combining the 15 new markets with the three that Bharti held prior, the purchase will give it just under 170 million subscribers out of a potential customer population of 450 million in all 18 areas. Unless a regulatory issue holds up the deal, the newly acquired markets will include: Burkina Faso, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

As I review the largest mobile providers in the world, I’m reminded that I need to spend more time looking beyond my backyard in the U.S. It would take the combined subscriber counts of the two largest carriers here — Verizon’s 91 million and AT&T’s 85 million — to rival Bharti’s new size. Perhaps Nokia’s focus on emerging markets isn’t such a bad strategy after all. This worldwide approach is rubbing off on others as Dell just announced a deal with Telfonica Group in Latin America, the world’s No. 3 three mobile provider, to provide services and smartphones such as its Android-powered Aero handset. Now if we could only get the carriers to work out better international roaming agreements so that no one ever gets another $10,000 monthly bill, we’d be in business.

Here’s a look at where Airtel will fit in among the top mobile providers in the world:

Worldwide Mobile Telecom Rankings

Rank
Provider
Total Connections
Markets

1
China Mobile
525,331,266
2

2
Vodafone Group
309,580,257
23

3
Telefonica Group
202,333,430
20

4
America Movil Group
186,544,900
17

5
Airtel Group
169,468,523
18

6
China Unicom
147,587,000
1

7
Deutsche Telekom Group
127,919,986
12

8
Telenor Group
101,367,838
10

Table Source: Wireless Intelligence

Microsoft today launched a line-up of mobile devices called Kin. Built by Sharp and going on sale through Verizon Wireless starting next month, the phones are targeted at young people — mostly teenagers — and are the handiwork of members of the Danger team, which Microsoft acquired in February 2008 for $500 million.

I attended the Kin launch largely because I was curious as to what Microsoft’s response to the Apple-Android assault on the smartphone market would look like. After all, it’s not like anyone will be able to buy a Microsoft-branded Windows Phone anytime soon. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who was curious — the event was packed to the gills. So like everyone else there, I gave the first two models to be launched — the Kin One and Kin Two – a try, only to find myself quickly overwhelmed by all the things taking place on the screen.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let me start by accentuating the positive: The two devices are extremely well built and are exceptionally fast, with touchscreens that are positively spritely compared to their Android-based rivals. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the company has done a great job of cobbling together solid hardware that’s chock-full of features. The Kin Two in particular felt nice and sturdy; its slide-out keyboard was comfortable and its overall look was as appealing as the Palm Pre. OK that last bit was a joke, but it does look very much like the Palm device.

Marry that hardware to a superb 3G network like Verizon’s and you are in for a great experience, especially when accessing Internet-based services, whether they be photos, videos or contacts. Snapping photos or videos and loading them to the web using the Kin phones is dead simple.

Another excellent feature of the Kin phones is their tight integration with Microsoft’s Zune Music Service. Accessing music through the service was a totally mind-blowing experience — fast, responsive and easy to use. Whether that’s due to Verizon’s network or some under-the-hood trickery, I don’t know, but in the future I will expect all music services to be as good as this one.

Unfortunately all this goodness doesn’t add up to a great phone, because the user experience was cluttered and confusing. The opening screen, which is a grid divided into squares, is so busy it reminds me of Times Square on a Friday night.

Microsoft’s Kin can be divided into three components — the Loop, the Spot and the Studio. The Loop is essentially a social aggregation service that is very much like Motorola’s Blur except a tad more polished. It allows you to get updates from Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.

And as with the Moto Blur, it’s a good idea but one that causes visual dissonance — which is even more profound if you’ve ever experienced the picture-perfect serenity of an iPhone OS-based device. The lack of visual polish extends to the Spot, a sharing service that allows you to share  photos, texts and web pages with almost anyone by simply dragging them to a “spot” on your phone.

Again, a great idea, but one that needs some spit and polish.

Photo of Kin Studio By Microsoft

The most stunning part of the package is the Kin Studio. I absolutely love this feature, which offers a visually delighful way to save everything you’ve created on the phone to the Internet and then access it from any web browser. Use it in concert with a Facebook account and suddenly you have a whole new way of managing information. If Microsoft is smart, it’ll turn this into a freestanding service. Think of this as Microsoft’s version of Apple’s MobileMe, albeit one that works with all devices, regardless of their operating environments.

As you might have guessed by now, there’s a lot I like about the Kin line of phones and yet they left me feeling as satisfyied as I do after eating a quick Chinese meal at the food court. I found the overall experience to lack a certain coherence, and ironically I think the problem with the Kin line as it stands now can be summed up by this bit from the Microsoft press release:

With KIN, social networking is built into the fabric of the phone. KIN has a fun, simple interface, which is designed to help people publish the magazine of their life by making the people and stuff they love the focus rather than menus and icons.

Exactly — it’s trying to do too many things at once. And in the process, it’s defying what has become standard user behavior among young people: trying and buying applications. As AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui once told me: Apps are the new entertainment. From that perspective, Microsoft may have missed a step here, especially given its odds. Indeed, at least one analyst suggests that nearly 31 percent of American teenagers want an iPhone in “the next six months, up from 22% last fall and nearly double the 16% who wanted one a year ago.” From Fortune:

“We believe that the teen demographic is a critical component of long-term growth in the digital music and mobile markets,” wrote Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. “And Apple is taking its leading position in music and mobile markets.”

Well the good news is that Microsoft is at least is playing in the right market now.

Microsoft today launched its Kin line of handsets — web-enabled touchscreen phones built around social networking features, messaging, video sharing and the company’s Zune music offering — with two initial models. The new line is aimed squarely at the pre-smartphone demographic — a group that few competitors are targeting.

The Kin One and Kin Two contain three software and service features not found on any other Microsoft handsets: Kin Loop, Kin Spot and Kin Studio. Similar to Motorola’s Motoblur, Loop provides a central place to follow contacts on Facebook, My Space, Twitter and Windows Live with constant refreshes. A nice touch is how it allows users to prioritize friends, so that updates from people you’re most interested in take priority over passing acquaintances on the web. Sharing web pages, pictures or locations involves a simple drag and drop of data to the Spot. The Studio, meanwhile, provides web-based timeline-styled backup of all data created on the phones, such as still pictures, videos and messages. It can be used to view any of this data, even if it’s not locally stored, which helps offset the limited local storage capacity on both handsets.

Although the new Kin services are front and center, Microsoft’s use of the Zune ecosystem is clever in several ways. First, it could bring in revenue via teens’ accessing of unlimited music tracks for $15 a month Zune Pass subscription. And it provides a shot across the bow of Apple, which doesn’t yet offer a music subscription service — an opportunity that, as I noted in a GigaOM Pro report (subscription required)  about streaming tunes from the cloud, the company was missing out on.

The Kin is clearly a direct descendant from the Sidekick line that Microsoft gained when it purchased Danger two years ago — the Kin offers similar features and targets the same crowd. And that narrow focus on a largely untapped audience is undoubtedly what convinced to finally start selling its own branded line of phones — something it previously said it wouldn’t do.

So the social teenager who’s ready to move up from a feature phone but doesn’t want or need an expensive smartphone and corresponding app store will be well-served by the Kin line. After that, Microsoft will be more than happy to introduce them to full-fledged Windows Phone 7 devices.

The two Kin phones debut exclusively in Verizon Wireless retail stores next month; they’ll also be available on the Vodafone network at a future date, which the company declined to name.

LoadingNextPreviousPicture 1 of 6 kin-phones-with-zune

The iPad may be Apple’s next gold rush, but it’s also positioned to pay dividends to mobile developers in a big way. Applications for the much-hyped device will generally cost more than similar offerings on the iPhone, developers said in a story from the BBC this morning, due to unknown demand for the iPad and the extra work required to design to create feature-rich offerings that take advantage of the gadget’s high-tech screen. That presents a lucrative opportunity for developers who can entice users by fully leveraging the device’s capabilities.

Just how many people will want an iPad (or any other tablet) is uncertain, but GigaOM Pro VP of Research Michael Wolf predicts the tablet app market will reach $8.2 billion by 2015 (sub req’d). The increasing demand for mobile applications is crystal clear, however, according to data released today from Mplayit. The app discovery and merchandising startup said that 35 percent of iPhone, Android and BlackBerry users are interested in paid applications, with BlackBerry users willing to pay the biggest premium of all, with a medium price point of $5.99.

Those figures should be especially encouraging for developers targeting users of the iPad, which promises to offer a more interactive experience than is possible on even the best smartphones. Consumers who have grown accustomed to shelling out a couple of dollars for an iPhone game will surely pay a premium for titles that leverage the iPad’s 9.7-inch, high-resolution screen and its multitouch functionality. So if the iPad is a hit, developers who can deliver the goods on the impressive device will benefit as much as Apple will.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Forecast: Tablet App Sales to Hit $8B by 2015

5 Tips for Developers Targeting the iPad

The iPad: Cable TV for Publishers?

Mobile OSes Are No Longer Just About Mobile

Image courtesy Flickr user Johnny Vulkan.