Smartphone shipments are constantly on the rise and expected to surpass featurephones as early as 2012. But Qualcomm reckons there’s life in the old dogs yet.
Liat Ben-Zur, Qualcomm’s senior director of business development, says: "Obviously there's a big trend - everyone is moving towards smartphones but I believe by 2014 that 54 per cent of phones are still going to be feature phones.
"So there's a reality here that in the market there's a massive space for featurephones.”
There’s an insane amount of Qualcomm Snapdragon devices in production – around 250 smartphones and 40 tablets – but the San Diegans suggest their own operating system, Brew, will breathe new life into featurephones.
"Brew is really meeting a need in the featurephone space with some sophisticated features and a usability that can rival some of the smartphone experiences, at a much lower price point."
The ironically-named entry-level HTC Smart is one such phone. Indeed, at first glance, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was running Android, but delve deeper and you’ll discover it’s a rather stripped down - though far from terrible - imposter.
Meh, we’ll stick with our smartphones.
via: Pocket-lint
