Moore’s Law observes that over the history of computing, processing speeds have doubled every two years. Whether such an exponential rate of growth is permanently sustainable is subject to some doubt, but what is irrefutable is that the pace of technological change that anyone alive today has seen has never before been observed in the course of human history. Almost everyone over the age of 30 in an advanced economy remembers when they got their first mobile phone.

Driving the growth of smartphones is, of course, China from where brands less sophisticated and less well known than Huawei and Xiaomi are driving sales “frugal but feature-rich”, according to The Economist) and, in Myanmar at least, are both pervasive and available for as little as US$30.

Chinese manufacturers are not the only kids on the block when it comes to the cheaper smart phones, however. To much fanfare, Google launched the Android One device in India, though sales have been somewhat disappointing. Samsung recently launched the “Galaxy Grand Max”, a lower-end smartphone, though one that is initially only available in the company’s South Korean home market, in what is seen as an effort to reverse the decline in its market share, largely at the hands of the aforementioned Chinese manufacturers.

WP-android-one-01We’ve been taking a look at laudable recent developments in mobile device hardware such as the launch of low-cost Android One devices in India this past year, and it got us to thinking. What’s the use of a cheap smartphone if mobile data is still complex, confusing and expensive?

Helping low-income people in developing markets migrate from a life without digital connectivity to one in which high-quality smartphones are easily affordable is akin to compressing dozens of years of technological progress into one very short timeframe.

Android One followed the launch at the end of August by Mozilla, the non-profit behind the Firefox browser, of its own low-cost smartphone for the Indian mobile market.

Related reading:MBBS in china  led strip distributor