Cheap smartphone market impedes the unification Android
Today, Android is the most popular free mobile operating system, showing the rapid development and growth of the market share occupied. However, Google has long been followed by many analysts concluded that the barrier acts as a platform to promote fragmentation that resulted from the former strategy to withdraw products. Therefore, the company is making efforts to overcome this negative factor.
In particular, this last step was the release of Android 4.0, which will be a uniform system for smartphones and tablets. However, the Ice Cream Sandwich is designed for smartphones and mid-level market is Android-entry-level devices, where Google has a strong position, is unlikely to be interested in this OS and will continue to rely on older versions of Android, which will perpetuate the fragmentation of the platform.
A new report research firm In-Stat shows that in 2015 the market will be supplied 340 million budget Android-smartphone. The category of low-cost, in this case assigned unit price $ 150 or less. Currently in the U.S., many smart phones can be purchased at that price, but only if the additional agreement to use the services of the operator. Without a contract at that price buyers are increasingly preferred solution based on operating system Android. Learn more about software development company!
Microsoft has recently puzzled problem of competition in the middle and lower segment of the market with Windows Phone, but the real action in this regard has not yet taken. Attention to the market of secondary and primary level and manifests itself from other mobile platforms – Apple iOS. Just look at the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 – the first smartphone in the United States implemented free of charge, and the other sold for $ 100 (8GB version) when signing a two-year contract. However, expensive supplementary agreement can not be overlooked when purchasing a smartphone.
In-Stat Specialists believe that the segment of cheap Android-devices will increase the fragmentation of the platform due to the fact that most of these smart phones will be equipped with Android 2.2 Froyo or 2.3 Gingerbread, as these versions have a good set of features and modest requirements for the use of memory and processor . Increased demands on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to hardware make this version less attractive to affordable Android-devices.
Investigation of In-Stat also includes a number of interesting conclusions on the market cheap smartphones
Android may begin to lose interest in the field of low-cost devices, as this market may become much more competitive, especially if other software companies interested in operating a given area (an example is Samsung, promoting its system bada sector in low-cost devices, and Microsoft, has concluded agreement with ZTE).
Smartphones are usually equipped with low-level processor with 600 MHz and EDGE chip with a price below $ 10. This allows you to keep the price under $ 150.
Small manufacturers of smartphones sometimes buy parts for the “gray market” for companies not paying royalties, royalties and taxes.
The main competitors in the market of cheap machines will act as Huawei, MicroMax, Motorola, Samsung, Spice, and ZTE.
In general, analysts say that with the growth of the market of cheap smart phones, which will in future dominate the markets of Latin America, Africa, India, China and other developing countries, Google will be very hard to avoid increasing fragmentation of the platform, as in this area the old version its mobile operating system will enjoy a high popularity.