Word: nokia
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...course, it will be a long time before the iPhone is commonplace in China. The typical phone here is a $100 Nokia. China Unicom hasn't named its price for the iPhone 3G and 3GS models that it plans to bring to the market this fall, but with a gray-market 3G iPhone now going for about $575 in China, the device will be far beyond the means of the average Chinese phone buyer. (See TIME's top iPhone applications...
Seoul over the past decade has become a hotbed of early adopters, and global powerhouses from Microsoft to Cisco Systems to Nokia use it as a laboratory. The level of connectivity provided by the city's electronic infrastructure means "ubiquitous life" has become an inescapable catchphrase in Seoul. "Almost all new apartment complexes now advertise home networks and ubiquitous-life features," says Lim Jin-hwan, vice president for solution sales at Samsung Electronics. In a nutshell, that means every electronic device in the home can be controlled from a central keypad or a cell phone. Biorecognition lock systems open apartment...
That kind of presence in emerging markets helps explain why Nokia is blurring the boundary between smart phones and cheaper handsets, and trying to entice customers to trade up. In recent months, the firm has unveiled a slew of devices aimed at developing markets, some costing as little as $60. That might seem a lot to pay for someone earning a few hundred dollars a month, but for many people in places where access to electricity is hit-and-miss at best, a good phone can double as a computer, an MP3 device or even a video player...
Take, for example, Nokia's new 2730 model, which will be available later this year for just over $110. The 3G device might not have a touchscreen or a swish keyboard, but with access to Ovi Mail, Nokia's free e-mail service, it's designed to give thousands of consumers in emerging markets their "first Internet experience," says Credit Suisse's Garcha. Ovi Mail was conceived specifically for consumers with limited PC access, and almost all the 350,000 accounts registered since the service's launch last December have been created on Nokia phones, not on computers...
That outlook no doubt includes extending smart-phone services beyond major urban areas. In rural India, where Nokia controls around four-fifths of the mobile-phone market, according to Bernstein research, locals may not be quite ready for smart phones yet - but they will be. At the Mobile and More outlet in the city of Gwalior in central India, co-owner Gaurav Kukreja's best seller is a no-frills 2G Nokia. But, Kukreja says, "younger people from villages often go to cities to study. They come back well-versed with new technology, and with aspirations. They want the latest...