[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.