Demand for inexpensive smartphones is growing

The smartphone market is projected by ABI Research to grow by 56% in Asia this year. The leading role in this will be played by inexpensive smartphones based on Android, whose market share will grow from 16% in 2010 to 52% in 2011.

Android is now firmly holding its position in the market of inexpensive smartphones, since most users who simply cannot afford high-quality smartphones for $ 400-$500, buy them. According to a new study by In-Stat, 339 million low-cost Android smartphones will be sold in 2015.

According to In-Stat, in many parts of the world, many users simply cannot afford a classic Android smartphone or another elite smartphone. But after all, everyone wants to have not a simple mobile phone, but a “smart phone”. In the category of cheap smartphones, there is only one option – Android – which is why we see such forecasts for its sales for 2015.

“The segment of low-cost Android devices will lead to further fragmentation of the platform,” says Allen Nogii, director of research at In-Stat. “Many Android smartphones in this category will be implemented based on version 2.2 or 2.3, as they have good functionality, but small memory and not the strongest processor.” Which, accordingly, reduces their cost.

He also added that the recently announced Android 4.0 is not very attractive for this market, since it has more memory and a more powerful processor.

The study also notes that Google will lose part of this market share, as other mobile OS vendors will also want to occupy this niche. For example, Apple announced that the old version of the iPhone – 3GS – will be available for almost nothing when signing a two-year contract.