[iuyhgtfvgbhjn]

90% of potential cell phone customers aren't looking for a smartphone, they don't currently have any sort of phone and guess who makes all the cheap waterproof rugged phones.

hint - the next billion customers don't live near Apple stores.

[mikedouglas]

You'd be surprised. Worldwide mobile phone ownership is up to 5 billion[0]. Meanwhile, much of the first world has already transitioned to smartphones.

If you wanted to jump on the cheap phone trend, you're ten years late. Whatever margins existed once are now gone. Nokia, the king of cheap phones, just fired their CEO and replaced him with a software guy from Microsoft. Apple, HP and Blackberry know exactly what market their fighting over.

[0]: http://www.poder360.com/article_detail.php?id_article=4704

[athom]

Is that five billion individual owners? That's pretty impressive! Current estimates put the whole world population at just under 7 billion.

http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html has it at about 6.8B, and a Google search on "current world population" turns up similar figures.

[iuyhgtfvgbhjn]

Last stats I saw showed that for W Europe the average user had owned >5 handsets.

[blub]

That doesn't mean that smartphones can't get better & cheaper, displacing some of the feature phones. Smartphones are ~26% of the entire market, I'll give you the source for that tomorrow.

[blub]

The source is Mobile Business Briefing.

[sandGorgon]

You are wrong - the next billion (or two!) live next door to China, from where we are seeing the emergence of the first sub $200 (full, unlocked price) phones this month [http://www.priceindia.in/tv/spice-mi-300-price-%E2%80%93-che...]

That price figure is going to fall way, way lower once the Android supporting Mediatek chipsets enter full production [http://www.electronicsweekly.com/blogs/david-manners-semicon...]

I predict $100 Mediatek-powered Android smartphones by summer 2011, flooding the Asian market.

[iuyhgtfvgbhjn]

What about the Asian market more than 10km from the coastal cities?

The same market that has one Nokia1100 per village in Africa aren't about to buy $100 smartphones for each of their kids.

[sandGorgon]

That particular market is snapping at Nokia's heels as well. While its sales have stagnated, new contenders have risen very fast in the ultra-low cost market

[http://toostep.com/debate/two-year-old-micromax-becomes-indi...]

[blub]

Good luck getting Android to run fast on a low-powered 100$ device.

[joeyo]

You might need luck if you assume that the industry is standing still and chips and batteries aren't getting cheaper and more powerful...

Sub-$100 Android devices that "run fast" are inevitable. The only question is how soon.

[rimantas]

hint: you don't make much money selling dumbphones, no matter market share.