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Why Cheap Smartphones Are Going To Upset the Industry
An anonymous reader writes "Just when people got used to good smartphones costing $200 with a 2-year contract, they also started to realize that those 2-year contracts were bad news. Still, it's often more palatable than fronting $600 for good, new hardware. But that's starting to change. Cell phone internals are getting cheap enough that prices for capable devices have been creeping downward below $200 without a contract. We ran into something similar with the PC industry some years back — previous-gen chips had no trouble running next-gen software (excluding games with bleeding-edge graphics), and so the impetus to keep getting the latest-and-greatest hardware disappeared for a lot of people. That revolution is underway now for smartphones, and it's going to shake things up for everybody, including Apple and Samsung. But the biggest effects will be felt in the developing world: '[F]or a vast number of people in a vast number of countries, the cheap handset will be the first screen, and the only screen. Their primary interface with the world. A way of connecting to the Internet where there are no telephone lines or coaxial cables or even electricity. In nations without subsidized cell phone contracts or access to consumer credit, the $50-and-you-own-it handset is going to be transformative.'"
Nothing to eat, your kids are dying of some horrible disease and you can't the medicine they need, but the datacomm is improving every day! I really, really hate to admit it, but for once Bill Gates is right.
Should be downvoted as downright stupid. If one of the three towns 20 miles footwalk away has the medicine your kid needs and the other two don't, then having a phone to find out which one can save your kid's life. People in Africa use phones to get information about markets so they can go to the right market to buy or sell things. You really can't imagine that people in bad living conditions could use the power of communication supplied by a phone to improve their living conditions?
Transformative? Every time some semi alcoholic blogging 'communications major' from Vassar or some such place wanders into the mall and discovers that last year's models can be had, from a third party kiosk for near-free they immediately whip out their own brand new iPhone to proclaim a Golden Age is Upon Us.
Cheap smartphones have been around for years and years you retard. The problem is the NETWORK.