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1. The main point of GSM is not economies of scale but entirely different pricing structure that was possible with phone/SIM card separation. High cellphone costs/long term contracts in countries created unnecessary barriers in the former USSR that were recovering from deep depression.
2. When I say "different people", I mean people of different cultures and countries.
You seem to equal cheap cellphones with infrequent use but you omit the importance of those calls. People who bought them may have needed them the most. Fixed line phone infrastructure in my country was not in good shape and the cell phone was often the only option available. For one who is looking for job, even the simplest cell phone provides great value. A business owner could afford more sophisticated and expensive phone but even he is getting more value from cheap phones owned by potential job seekers.
3. Amazon or Barnes & Noble are not players in the markets I was talking about. I don't know which vendors will become successful here but there are many indications that they will be local ones that will either copy the models of "global" players or base it on some commonly agreed standards (similarly to GSM).
In fact, in Latvia and Russia many other global services usually have local equivalents that are more popular than global ones. For e-mail instead of gmail/yahoo/hotmail, the local inbox.lv or mail.ru in Russia will be used. Instead of Facebook there is draugiem.lv or odnoklasniki.ru. For music or online movies instead of Netflix streaming there are local telecoms providing these services. Though Google search is also popular in Latvia but in Russia yandex.ru is still strong with 64% market share and with single advantage -- inflections of Russian language.
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