Mobile Phones and Connectivity-Solutions

I think that the solution to the problem as I posted in the last post is actually a very big opportunity for the semicon companies.Phones with higher computing power at affordable
rates should be made available the masses.This is possible by having a higher volumes
strategy with lower margins for higher computing power phones rather than treating them as premium products with higher margins.Secondly,the price of these phones can be brought down by using open platforms in them and selling them with customised software.So,that users only pay for what they need rather than making them pay for a host of exotic softwares on the phone which they will never use.

The second problem of poor quality connectivity will be solved by the coming of 3G services.

Mobiles and digital connectivity--problems

Looking at present statistics,mobiles seem to be the only gadget which has the highest penetration in India.Looking at the wide penetration of mobile phones,many experts are proposing to provide a host of services using the mobile phones.The service includes Internet connectivity mobile banking etc.No doubt the idea makes a lot of sense as it will provide access to a host of services to a wide array of citizens.But,I see two major problems with this idea.

(i)Low End Phones:-
Most of the phones being sold in India are entry level with very low computing power.They have very simple or no application processors with low computing power.The focus is more on the base band processing part for voice services.To run some applications,it needs to have a decent application processor.Looking at the current scenario,even mid range phones struggle to run ordinary applications.The so called higher end phones are exorbitantly costly.

(ii)Low speed Internet connectivity:-The supposedly 2.5 G services like GPRS provide very low speeds and practically unusable from mid range phones.Even if the connectivity is decent ,the data charges are exorbitant.Airtel charges 399 for downloading 500KB in Blackberry.

---Next post I will offer some solutions..