I did an article recently for All About Symbian about the state of budget phones, partly with regard to their web browsing abilities. As an example I looked at the new Nokia 5000, which is a bottom-of-the-range budget phone aimed at developing countries:

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/featu...can_do_now.php



There are two major things here:

- Nokia is now starting to bundle Opera Mini with even the cheapest new models, so even the most casual low-budget users will now have a chance to see PC websites on their phones

- Nokia has recently said they're going to put the WebKit browser on their non-smart phones as standard (they already put it on their S60 smartphones several years ago).

WebKit, for those who are unfamiliar, is the open source browser which forms the core of Apple's Safari browser and Nokia's S60 browser.

In other words, the cheapest budget phone models are soon going to have a similar browser core to the iPhone.

This could be a very interesting development indeed, because these phones cost literally one fifth to one tenth the price of a typical smartphone. You can buy them unlocked without a contract for under $100, and the lowest price models can go under $50.

Budget phones form the majority of sales worldwide, and are bought by people in even the poorest parts of the world, who often may have no other access to computing devices.

Interesting but I doubt people will use a webbrowser a lot without having a large touch-screen or a data plan/wifi. It seems more like a way to be able to tick 'has webbrowser' in the feature list.

If they have no access to any other computing equipment (which is very likely with the global budget phone market), then this could well be a way into the web.

I'm not saying it's as good as a touchscreen, but it's better than WAP and it's better than nothing. For most of the world those may be the only choices they have with regard to web access.

On the data plans issue, that's nothing to do with hardware at all. I've had an unlimited mobile network data plan for a couple of years now, and my network operator doesn't care what hardware I use the SIM card with.

I was reasoning along the lines that people with enough money to have other means to access the internet wouldn't be willing to pay for a data plan if the only way to use it is that tiny non-touch screen. And in 3rd world countries data plans are probably too expensive. Even then it may be profitable for phone makers to have a browser because it is known that feature lists make people buy stuff, even if they don't know what all the items mean or if they really need them.

<edit>
To investigate my claim of expensive data plans in developing countries I did a Google search of
' "data plans" "developing countries" expensive' . I couldn't find anything useful right away but interestingly half of the results are about Canada. The new developing country?
<edit>

i was using opera mini on my non-smart sonyericsson Z710 for maybe a year or two before i got my 770 and later N800. and i still fall back to it at times.

i dont see the need for touch screen, and as one can toggle the images of without loosing much (and can download the images one want to see as needed) there is not that much data traffic to talk about.

thing is that with opera mini the page is predigested by a proxy server. yes, you loose some ajaxy shiny bits, but beyond that i have found most pages work out fine.

it even got a release with a new zoom interface right before apple launched its phone with a similar way to browse the web (but i still prefer the single column mode most of the time).

when one is used to java enabled phones, the original iphone ended up less then spectacular. the new firmware however do elevate it somewhat (but i can still install a random jar file on my SE, all iphone apps have to go via apple). i even bumped into a windows app that enabled me to turn any pdf, html or txt file into a jar-file e-book. i read the mirrorshades trilogy that way

Well that's what I'm calling it. Once an innovative country and ironically an early leader in wireless (long distances with few people) is now a wireless wasteland with probably the most expensive voice and data plans on earth with horrible restrictions and generally poor performance. I may never own a cell phone up here.

And yet suckers stood in long lines to buy an iThing.

Wired access is a very different story. generally cheaper and faster than most places. Go figure.

Safaricom in Kenya is offering 700 MB/month for 1999 Kenyan shillings which is 18.80 euros.

GDP in Kenya is $1445 per capita which would be 75 eur/month. So clearly mobile internet access is not cheap at all. Cellular to landline costs 25 shillings/min which means that 80 minutes of landline call equals 700 MB of data. 80 minutes if voice at 25 kbps is 15 MB, so maybe data plan is not so expensive after all

1999 Kenyan Shillings is $31 AUD. $29 from Telstra, over here in Australia gets you 80MB or just over 1/10th that. Ouch. More worryingly, these guys are very popular over here. Though I suppose that's not quite comparatively the same sum of money compared to someone's income.

(then again, other carriers are more reasonable - 3 is $20 for 500MB, the plan I'm on.)

In most of the developing+BRIC world, wireless access is the ONLY way to get 'net access. And that includes big cities like Sao Paulo; some very poor neighbourhoods has no ADSL, but has EDGE.

About prices: I pay 29 reais (11,41 euros) for 250MB/month on my provider (TIM Brasil); they have an unlimited plan for 149 reais (58,65 euros).

This is fascinating stuff, and Krisse can consider herself thanked for posting the link to the article. In developing nations, where the cellular/mobile network is often the only electronic information infrastructure that exists, entire economies are forming around the mobile phone. There is a lot to be learned from them.