Techtonic Shift - Greater Inequalities amongst handsets - the disappearing Middle Class

I had spoken earlier about how Smart Phones are now Personal Mobile Computers that can make calls as well.

Well, another 'tech'tonic shift is the Occam's Razor of pure economics, where we are seeing the rise of two distinctly different species originating from a common source the ubiquitous cellphone

Currently there appear to be two distinctions made when discussing mobile phones -

Smart Phones and Feature Phones 

(For us Sci-Fi Geeks, I would like to classify the Smart Phones as the Morlocks and Feature Phones as the Eloi of the "Genus Cellphone")

While I have discussed Smart Phones in several earlier posts starting here, I have been (and continue to be) biased and ignored the latter category of  Feature Phones .

The term "Feature" Phone has been coined as a distinguished term to avoid "dumb" phone ... the  economic fact that over 4 out of 5 (over 80%) of all mobile phones sold today are feature phones, is evidence enough that there is nothing dumb about these phones.

While Smart Phones are what raise the Standard, it is  Feature Phones that move the market

Here's a nice comScore graphic -

As the inforgraphic above shows how HUGE the Feature Phone  market itself is, now the semantics are getting even more complex 

1) High End Feature phones

2) Low Cost &

3) Ultra low cost Feature phones

The World's Leading Manufacturers earn their bread and butter from Feature Phones... yes, agreed the jam and sprinkles are with Smart Phones ... but no one can live on jam and sprinkles alone! (though Steve Jobs and the others, would have us think otherwise)!

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/121410-the-rise-of-the-ultra-low-cost.html

End Note - Merry Christmas! AND Please Support Wikipedia!

Wikipedia - I donated to Keep it Free! 

Dear Aseem, 

Thank you for your gift of XXXX to the Wikimedia Foundation, received on November 26, 2010. I’m very grateful for your support. 
Your donation celebrates everything Wikipedia and its sister sites stand for: the power of information to help people live better lives, and the importance of sharing, freedom, learning and discovery. Thank you so much for helping to keep these projects freely available for their nearly 400 million monthly readers around the world. 

Your money supports technology and people. The Wikimedia Foundation develops and improves the technology behind Wikipedia and nine other projects, and sustains the infrastructure that keeps them up and running. The Foundation has a staff of about fifty, which provides technical, administrative, legal and outreach support for the global community of volunteers who write and edit Wikipedia. 
Many people love Wikipedia, but a surprising number don't know it's run by a non-profit. Please help us spread the word by telling a few of your friends. 

And again, thank you for supporting free knowledge. 

Sincerely Yours, 


Sue Gardner 
Executive Director 

* To donate: http://donate.wikimedia.org 
* To visit our Blog: http://blog.wikimedia.org 
* To follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/wikimedia 
* To follow us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/wikipedia 


This letter can serve as a record for tax purposes. No goods or 
services were provided, in whole or in part, for this contribution. 
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a non-profit charitable corporation 
with 501(c)(3) tax exempt status in the United States. Our address is 149 New Montgomery, 3rd Floor, San Francisco, CA, 94105. Tax-exempt number: 20-0049703