In India, Russia and Brazil, the older types of cellphone are still the most popular, according to a study published Thursday by Nielsen, the research firm. In India, 80 percent of phone users own an old-style feature phone, and only 10 percent have a smartphone, according to Nielsen’s estimates. In Brazil and Russia, feature phones account for roughly half the market.
Why the sluggish adoption for smartphones? In such countries, smartphones can be even more expensive than they are here. In Russia, for example, the full price of an iPhone 4 is $663 through Beeline, the Russian carrier.
China is one emerging country where the smartphone is dominant, with 66 percent of the market. That is largely thanks to the plethora of cheap Android smartphones available there.
It’s no wonder there are whispers of Apple’s making a cheaper iPhone. In the coming years, manufacturers will be fiercely competing for the remaining nonsmartphone owners, who are mostly in emerging countries. Recent data from Qualcomm suggests that emerging regions including Latin America, China and India are adding substantially higher numbers of smartphone subscriptions than North America, Japan, Korea and Europe.