Tag Archives: handsets
Competition hotting up in our end of the handset market
I just returned from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, a monster event with 70,000 plus attendees that puts the ITU Telecom World events to shame. No wonder ITU’s Hamadoun Toure was introduced at the Ministerial Program as being a good friend from GSMA’s sister organization. We talked policy, but the real game was the [...]
One third of mobile phones shipped to Sri Lanka are multi-SIM?
Is it that the Top of the Pyramid is more into multi-SIM use than the BOP? It appears from the report that multi-SIM use may be higher than was reported by Teleuse@BOP4. Or, it could be indicating that multi-SIM use is on the increase, with greater availability of multi-SIM handsets. CyberMedia Research (CMR), a computer [...]
Thai media reports Teleuse@BOP4
It took a little time, but a comprehensive report on the Bangkok launch of teleuse@BOP4 results has been published in the Nation (Thailand). The survey found that Thai users spent more than any other nationality on mobile phones, $93 on average compared to $50 or less elsewhere. Most of the phones they bought had radio [...]
Mobiles, cancer and lightning
The trigger for this post was a call from an outlying area in Sri Lanka. A concerned citizen had got hold of my number and wanted my advice on the effects of cell towers an an observed increase in lightning strikes in his area. I told him that people tend to associate new things like [...]
Not my wish list, but as good a starting point as any in thinking about the next handsets
This is definitely not the appropriate set of new features that we need at the Bottom of the Pyramid in emerging Asia and elsewhere. Voice commands, greater convenience in reading/viewing, more location-sensitivity, etc. would be among mine. Of course we could also consider what the surveys say about flashlights and radios. But the most important [...]
Shanzai! One answer to the puzzle of cheap phones
We’ve always wondered how new smart mobile phones, the technological marvels they are, go for so cheap. According to the teleuse@BOP3 study, the average price paid for a new phone by people in SEC groups D and E in Pakistan is USD 47 (down from USD 77 in 2006). The price of a second-hand phone [...]
Are mobilephone markets saturated?
According to analysts who see the world as made up of the US market, yes: Analysts and investors are beginning to ask whether the industry can continue growing. The challenge is both simple and daunting: how to expand when more than half of the six billion people on the planet already have phones. And even [...]
Handset maker profits with focus on BOP
We don’t write enough about handsets, a crucial element in extending connectivity to those at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Here is an Economist piece on a rapidly rising handset maker. “Although ZTE supplies phones to big names such as Vodafone and Telefónica, most of its customers are in the developing world, where overall handset [...]
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