July 5, 2006—If “Pong” and “3D Pool” don’t do it for you anymore, consider “Safety Cricket,” a cell phone version of the classic sport where the balls are represented by condoms and red ribbons. Or “Quiz with Babu,” a trivia game about HIV transmission that works like “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”

“Cell phones are the most widely used technology instruments in the hands of common man,” says Subhi Quraishi of New Delhi-based ZMQ Software Systems, which created the free games as an educational project to parallel its profit-making work. “You’ll find someone who is not able to read and write but still has a mobile hand phone.”

American callers can’t play yet, but 65 million cell phones users in India and East Africa can download any of four ZMQ games from their host providers.

The next phase for ZMQ is adapting the messages—and sometimes the games themselves—to appeal to different international audiences. For example, “Safety Cricket” will be replaced by “Safety Baseball” and “Safety Basketball” in the U.S.

Certainly the medium is right for Americans, of whom 22% use their cell phones for gaming, according to the PEW Internet American Life Project.

“Cell phones are a great idea” for education of this kind, says Richard Clark of the Center for Cognitive Technology at the University of Southern California. ”Getting information to people is eight tenths of the battle."