Market research firm TNS released an interesting report about mobility featured on Reuters yesterday.

It has been widely recognized that emerging market countries have embraced mobile devices because they never built the land line infrastructure that has existed for decades in the developed world. These markets effectively “leap-frogged” over land line technology and instantly adopted wireless devices. The devices we historically have seen in these markets fall under the “frugal technology” category. Frugal technology in this case refers to non-smartphones that are physically durable with large address books; designed for an entire family to use.

But the leap-frog mentioned in this report is not referencing that of land line infrastructure, but the use of PC’s. The PC legacy is almost non-existent in places like India and Sub-Saharan Africa, and mobility has quickly become the primary means of accessing the internet. In emerging market countries, accessing the internet through mobile devices has increased from 26% to 50% of people in the past year.

This kind of activity requires the use of a sophisticated smartphone, not the frugal devices we have seen in the past. This is a critical distinction and will be particularly meaningful for leaders in the smartphone market (Apple, RIM, HTC).

Check out the Reuters video here!