In the next three years, the smart feature phone ecosystem will experience a staggering $28 billion business opportunity, global industry analysis firm, Counterpoint Research has revealed.
This opportunity will come to significantly increase access to information and communications technology and to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in the least developed countries by 2020, where available records indicate that 34percent of the global population are not yet subscribed to mobile services and close to 57percent do not use mobile internet services.
The smart feature phone that is powered by optimized software platforms that support internet applications and internet services within a feature phone form-factor, is a new idea developed by stakeholders.
The idea helps millions of basic feature phone users, who were unable to migrate to smartphones, to adopt a smart feature phone that addresses their needs in an affordable way while also introducing them to the growing digital ecosystem.
According to the Counterpoint Research report, this new idea will be enabled by a potential of more than 300 million smart feature phone users globally by the end of 2021, explaining that software and services alone will contribute to 71 per cent of this near- to mid-term revenue opportunity, or around $20 billion.
A smart feature phone is a device with a traditional feature phone form-factor and design, but with a chipset and an operating system which can support sophisticated smartphone-like features such as high-speed Internet access along with an application and services ecosystem.