The Realities of a $50 Smartphone

An anonymous reader writes: Google recently reiterated their commitment to the goal of a $50 smartphone in India, and a new article breaks down exactly what that means for the phone's hardware. A budget display will eat up about about $8 of that budget — it's actually somewhat amazing that so little money can still buy a 4-4.5" panel running at 854x480. For another $10, you can get a cheap SoC — something in the range of 1.3Ghz and quad-core, complete with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS radios. A gigabyte of RAM and 4 gigabytes of storage can be had for another $10 or so. Throw in a $2.10, 1,600 mAh battery and a $5 camera unit, and you've got most of a phone. That leaves about $9 to play with for basic stuff like a casing, and then packaging/marketing costs (some of which could be given freely, like the design work.) Profit margins will be nonexistent, but that's less of an issue for Google, who simply wants to spread the reach of Android.

Comments

Re: How to make a $50 phone

[Hardhead_7]

Google wants to make money off advertising. Plus, if they can become the standard in a huge emerging market, that's playing the long game.

Re:They forgot something

[jiriw]

Possibly these $50 phones will get better security update support than most $500 phones-with-hardware-vendor-goo. Simply because the operating system on these will be provided directly by the operating system manufacturer (Google) and by contract no vendor-goo will be allowed.

My phone got pretty much every update between 4.0 and <current release> and I expect to receive updates promptly for quite some years to come. By the way (if you didn't get enough hints), this phone (and my phone of choice) is a Nexus...

There is only one other significant party in the smartphone market that has the same edge... but the phones they make are too locked down for my personal taste. So I only use those when I have to... at work for testing purposes. (I write app software for both iOS and Android.)

Re:Already running a $50 phone.

[Tough Love]

Microsoft got Windows Phone right.

That may be (or not) but Microsoft's brand has negative value. Nobody buys Microsoft except by force.

Re:Doogee X5--$50 quadcore 5" HD screen

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

It doesn't matter if it comes with 4GB ROM or if you pay to upgrade to 8GB ROM. Without flash storage, your phone is useless.

Re:How to make a $50 phone

[OrangeTide]

As an original developer for the Kindle, I can say with some authority that I know how zero and negative margin mobile devices work.

The OS was right, everything else was wrong.

[Kenshin]

I agree. Microsoft got Windows Phone right. The OS is excellent

They were just years late to the party, decided to go home and change their underwear the moment they got to the party (the WP7 vs WP8 fiasco), found out they didn't actually have any friends (app developers) at the party, and they brought a prostitute (Nokia) as their date.