April 2, 2005
Cell Phone Makers Hope To Connect In Poor Nations
Cell phones with cameras and Internet access are nice, but they're out of reach if you live on $2 a day or less, writes Mike Angell for Investors Business Daily.
"Economists say more than 1 billion of the planet's 6.5 billion folks are doing just that.
But phone service can help lift people out of such poverty. And for many of the world's poorest people, mobile phone service is the most viable. Landline networks are faulty or nonexistent in many parts of the Third World.
Thus, many companies in the wireless field see an opportunity with low-cost phones. Efforts to make such phones are one of the industry's big initiatives this year.
An estimated 3 billion people live within cell coverage areas but have no phone or phone service.
A phone that costs $30 or less could mean an additional 700 million customers, says the GSM Association trade group. The cheapest prices today are $60.
To get costs down, 10 operators from Africa, the Middle East and Central and Southeast Asia issued a bid to cell phone makers to come up with a low-cost phone. Motorola won.
Now Motorola is designing sub-$40 phones, with the potential to sell 6 million right away to the carriers in the poor countries.
People in the industry say demand for such low-cost phones could reach 100 million a year, a high volume that would also help keep prices down."
Related: Motorola to sell phones for less than $40 in emerging markets
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