The $15 Mobile Phone and the Manufacturer's Virtual Network Operations

Forget the iPhone.....at a talk last week at the London Technology Network, mention was made of the projections for a $15 mobile 'phone by c 2008.

Hit that with Moore's Law and its a c $5 'phone by 2011 or so...a total commodity.

So the question is, what happens when price points such as these are reached?

Firstly, there are already more 'phones than people in many OECD countries. Secondly, at these prices most of the rest of the world will be wired. There is also quite a lot going on in the developing world with low cost Internet phones, driven by their own needs to have mobile devices which are first and foremost internet devices.

Leads to 2 interesting thoughts:

(i) In the OECD, phones at this price will be attached to things, not people - ThingPhones. All manner of devices will be talking...assuming they can afford to make the calls....

(ii) In the developing world, will the need for real IP connectivity drive Mobile Web 2.0 adoption before the developed world's Telcos tear down their walled gardens? This is a topic in itself to be dealt with in another blog.

Taking ThingPhones, one of the other speakers (BP) noted that the uses for ThingPhones in industrial plants was potentially very high, but a combination of regulatory strictures and operators disinterest made it impossible to run such Manufacturers' Virtual Network Operation services.

In addition this makes it hard to integrate seamlessly with the world of RFID devices.

Clearly if the Operators can't agree to help in these areas then WiFi et al will go in by default, even though they are less reliable in such environments - yet another market (after email, music etc) the Mobile Operators leave open to penetration by inaction?

(This post was delayed in being posted up due to the SNAFU system in our backoffice infrastructure - I forgot to save it