Vodafone have used the Barcelona based Mobile World Congress to reveal their Vodafone 150, a phone which is heralded to be the “lowest-cost mobile phone on Earth.” Aimed at developing countries, the handset will sell for less than £10 and will be launched in Turkey, India and eight nations in Africa including Kenya, Ghana and Lesotho.
As the prediction from the UN expressed that during this year the number of individuals with phones will grow to five billion, Dr Hamadoun Toure from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) said “Even the simplest, low-end mobile phone can do so much to improve healthcare in the developing world.” He explained that even simply SMS could “deliver instructions on when and how to take complex medication such as anti-retrovirals or vaccines”, adding “It’s such a simple thing to do, and yet it saves millions of dollars.”
Meanwhile, whilst also improving healthcare, Vodafone expressed that the phone would also bring the popular M-Pesa money transferring service to far more people. With estimates that 11 million individuals currently utilise banking services through its networks, Vodafone also said that a slightly more expensive version of the handset would be available with a colour screen and radio for approximately £20.
Responding to the news, Frontline SMS’s Ken Banks expressed that whilst he welcomed the move, the price tag “lowers the bar, but not by a huge amount.” He added “I bought a HTC mobile in Uganda two years ago for just over $20 equivalent, so depending on how you play exchange rates this isn’t hugely different price wise. The price has come down but in terms of features (cheap phones have) remained largely static with poor memory, monochrome screens, no browser, and so on. The trick is to reduce the price and increase functionality, and few manufacturers have managed to crack this to any real extent.”
