$50 Smart Phones for Emerging Markets in 2013, Gartner Predicts

By 2013, the first $50 smart phone will appear in emerging countries, Gartner predicts, lead by devices produced by China-based firms.

"Semiconductor vendors that serve the mobile handset market must have a product strategy to address the low-cost smartphone platform, with $50 as a target in 2013," said Mark Hung, research director at Gartner.

That will be one of several developments that many who have worked in the communications business might find frankly surprising. 

Most surprising of all, perhaps, is the "solving" of the problem of "giving telephone service to billions of people who never have made a phone call." These days, that is mostly a problem that is solved, or soon to be solved. 

The next problem is related to another problem, namely the issue of how to get computing devices and networks to people who have never used a PC or the Internet. Most believe that mobile broadband is the answer to the access problem. 

Smart phones are becoming one answer to the "affordable devices" issue. In fact, the arrival of the low-cost smart phone parallels the earlier effort to develop low cost PCs for users in emerging markets. 

The new element is the availability of the tablet as a form factor likely to make a big difference in the "low cost PC" market, which has been the object of some attention over the last decade, under the one laptop per child or one tablet per child. 

We probably will be surprised over the next decade or so by the extent to which broadband access and use of the Internet has blossomed, globally.