Qualcomm's New Processor Brings 4G To Feature Phones As Company Eyes Growth in Developing Markets (fortune.com) 24
With smartphone growth tapped out in many developed countries, the biggest opportunities remaining are in markets where consumers have considerably less disposable income. Qualcomm moved Monday to address this next wave with a renewed chipset for lower-end smartphones and feature phones ("candy phones"). From a report on Fortune: Dubbed the 205 Mobile Platform, the chips will allow less expensive smartphones and even feature phones to connect to 4G LTE networks, which are just spreading in places like Brazil and India. Unlike Qualcomm's top-end chips, which can reach speeds of over 1 gigabit per second on 4G networks, the 205 chips top out at 150 megabits per second. The platform will also include other lower-end capabilities like support for 3-megapixel cameras. "India and the Southeast Asia regions present growth opportunities in the telecom space with 4G adoption rising and continued adoption of feature phones," Jim Cathey, president of Qualcomm Asia Pacific and India, said in a statement.
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They don't need to make any money in this market segment, they just need to prevent any other designer from making enough money in this segment that they can support the design effort needed to break into the high end.
Emerging markets?? What about the united states? (Score:2)
Verizon still does not offer a single flip phone with VoLTE support which will get to be a really big deal when they shut off the 2G service they use for voice in 2020.
Ok so the ZTE cymbal works on it but isn't officially supported.
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We'll always be a bit backwards here, that's the American way. I support preserving traditional cellphones, as God intended.
U.S.A. U.S.A. U.S.A. U.S.A. U.S.A.
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DynaTAC is also an acceptable answer.
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$36 per year (Score:2)
Data plan cramming used to be a thing four years ago [slashdot.org]. Nowadays, T-Mobile USA allows use of an Android phone on even a $3/mo prepaid plan.
Nokia? (Score:3)
Could this drive the 3310 retro phone, which was obsolete at launch for countries lacking a 2G network?
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It's has one distinguishing feature, a phone.
A smartphone is all about the apps, and I barely use the phone part of mine. The phone part kind of sucks anyways.
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"Feature phone" is a retronym for the type of cell phone that pre-dated the smartphone. Common features are calendars, simple games, and limited, slow internet access. And, no, "retronym" [wikipedia.org] was not coined just to distinguish old-style phones from smart ones. Some other examples of retronyms are "analog clock", "acoustic guitar", and "cloth diaper".
Wrong focus (Score:2)
Rather than focus on phones, shouldn't they focus on making 4G widely accessible to the infrastructure equipment of developing markets? It's not tough to have a 4G phone such as a Galaxy, iPhone or even a Lumia in a developing country, but if their telco companies don't offer 4G services, it's pretty worthless
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It's a chicken and egg situation. But once support for LTE becomes common in subscribers' hardware, the carriers will have an incentive to upgrade their own hardware to support LTE.