Your response will be influenced from which side of the coin you are looking at it. How about old mama who can neither read nor write but uses phone, don’t you think that simple phone will be best for her? Considering the price and power consumption! Now come to the other people who reside in the urban areas with low income… they definitely don’t need this phone (SMS/voice only phone). They like to have good things but dont have much to buy them. For now in Lagos, China phones dominates the market. Nokia phones that goes for N60,000, you can buy the chinese (clone) version generally called “Chinko” for N6,000 with all functionality (Data, Voice and multimedia) they’d like to buy an iphone if they can get it cheaper.
So knowing really who you target should be the main influence on what is being develop/produced.

These phones would only make sense with a really low power consumption. Granted, most of them aren’t power hungry and will have an adequate standby time, but if I had the choice between buying a crippled Vodafone 150 and …let’s say a used Nokia 1208, 6021 or even 6230, I’d certainly save money for the better phone. An analogy I’d like to use here is: “People in Africa drive Mercedes, BMW and Toyota. Not Tata or Dacia.”

Besides, try to find someone who will unlock these Vodafone 150 mobiles. I think they are so special, no one really wants to unlock them. Had a colleague who bought two of these Vodafone cheapos for his fam in Zambia and came back with them, telling me that no one could unlock them.

Interestingly, used iPhones are currently very overprized on the second hand market. Soo… taking the iPhone as the top of the pyramid, it should ring a bell somewhere at Vodafone’s marketing dept. that ppl (in Europe and Africa) really want better phones. After all, those who have the money for better phones will also be the ones with higher monthly telephone bills and generate decent revenue for the operator. Long tail & the herdsman in the bush who walks 5km to recharge his phone – what kind of revenue do they generate for Vodafone? Will SIM-Toolkits run on these phones?

I’d love to see a $34,99 smart phone with a decent browser, 3G and multiple user profiles.