With the high-end smartphone market almost saturated, handset makers have been focussing on lower-end market to drive in new customers by dropping the prices. While there has been good progress, ARM believes that it could reach $20.
ARM has revealed that it plans on aiming at the ultra-low cost market to capture the customers who desire to own a smartphone but still can’t afford the $200 price tags of most so-called affordable handsets. ARM predicts that smartphone prices would drop to as low as $20 in the next few months. However, it is unlikely that the prices could go any lower because despite the cost of the components, manufacturers still have costs to build the devices.
However, the $20 smartphone proposition seems quite possible as we recently saw the $25 Firefox OS smartphone. Not just that but the dropping costs of the components may give low cost smartphones with decent specs like faster processor, more memory and better cameras. In countries like India this is bound to be a grand success.
