A new report from Deloitte says sales of smartphones costing under $100 (£65) are expected to more than double this year. The consultancy has calculated there’ll be at least 500 million of these low-cost devices in use worldwide by the end of this year. It’s thought around 200 million sub-$100 smartphones were being used at the end of 2011.
The number of downloadable mobile applications is also expected to double to more than 2 million apps this year.
Deloitte’s report uses what it describes as a ‘consumer perception’ of what a smartphone is, because many of the new budget smartphones won’t have an open or widely-available operating system but will use a closed, proprietary OS. It says “The $100 smartphone could be considered analogous to the netbook” with a processor of about 200MHz to 600MHz; well below the spec for high-end devices.
[Deloitte’s Technology, Media & Telecommunications predictions (pdf)]