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The low-cost smartphones costing less than $150 present a strong growth opportunity for the mobile phone industry, according to the new NPD DisplaySearch Smartphones: Displays, Designs and Functionality report. These devices are forecast to double every year from 2010 to 2016, increasing from 4.5 to 311 million.
As you would expect, 60% of the demand is from the Asia Pacific region, where a large majority of component suppliers and manufacturing factories are located, providing both time and cost savings. These solutions have a shorter lifetime than high-end smartphones and are manufactured using ready-made solutions from application processor manufacturers.
The research company suggests that Android is the most popular operating system for low-cost smartphone designs because it is open source. Brands and manufactures tend to use mature, low-price components, rather than developing new ones.
NPD DisplaySearch forecasts that the share of low-cost smartphones will grow from 2% of total smartphone shipments in 2012 to 29% in 2016, with local brands and “white box” vendors in China taking an aggressive stance in capturing market share…
About The Author
Dusan Belic
Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.
