Back to the past with the feature phones

Who doesn’t miss a little bit the Nokia 3310? The unbreakable mobile phone by Nokia, with the green back light screen and the game Snake to spend some time. A mobile phone that made the history and that sometimes we miss because the smartphones are so much full of functions that often they distract us. Right for this reason it’s been created a market for those easy phones with few functions: the feature phones.

They came back in vogue from the need to do detox from the number one addiction instrument of nowadays: the smartphones. The feature phones allow to not be fully cut down from the world thanks to their basic functions. Those mobile phones are spreading even in the growing marketplaces like India and Africa on which even Facebook and Google get their eyes.

The mobile phones come back doing the phones

After an exponential growth the smartphones’ marketplace had a sudden decrease of the sales in the 2018, which didn’t touch though the feature phones. Infact the sales went on growing constantly in the last three years. Counterpoint Research estimates that in the 2019 they will be globally sold more than 400 millions, with predictions for the next three years that see on top India and Middle East, with a commerce of up to 800 millions of devices.

This growth trend is global, but how we can see the stronger ones are the emerging countries which have less spending power, but more buyers. The marketplace is then made even by the older population, which preferes a device with easier functions.

Right Nokia realized a launch of feature phones on the marketplace and to them followed investments even by other brands. Generally we don’t expect a huge spreading of those devices neither in our country, nor in the other west countries. But we can’t be sure that using less “evolved” phones won’t become a trend.

The biggest part of the success of the feature phones is due to the launch of the models Nokia: low cost but even attractive, like the review of the famous 3310. Another brand that is going through is Jio Phone which has operating systems KaiOS.

To the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, right KaiOS announced the cooperation with the african mobile operator Orange. It will be activated a promotion of the mobile phones with this software at only 20 dollars in 16 countries of Africa and Middle East.

The market is moving so fast that even Mark Zuckerberg seen that. By looking for the new potenitialities of incomes in this area he made an agreement right with KaiOS to make available (preinstalled) the application Facebook and to give the possibility to use even WhatsApp on those basic phones.

Google instead, during an event in Nigeria, presented Gallery Go: an application similar to Google Photo which though needs less space and it can be used even offline.

The functions of the feature phones

The models are many: from the ones that allow only to send messages to the ones that go on internet, even by having limited functions.

Surely we have to make a step back about the cameras which aren’t any more as much performing as the ones installed on the smartphones.

Even the applications, due the few memory installed on the phones, are really limited (nothing like the new technologies available on the most recent smartphones) but we surely have the advantage of a battery which lasts for many days.

The concept is that we come back to delegate the most complex functions to the computers by saving on the cost of the mobile device.

This post is also available in: Italiano