Now all smartphone makers and major mobile operators are striving to gain some of the attention of potential customers in oversaturated Western markets, while striving to grab a piece of the pie in developing countries.
In these territories, relatively free from the mobile market, a race is underway for the maximum reduction in the cost of devices and communication services sold there, the result of which may be a free smartphone with unlimited Internet traffic, calls and SMS.
At the same time, marketing and PR agencies around the world are trying to invent ever more daring and effective ways to serve their ads to end users.
Many experts believe that we are on a development path that will lead to the fact that a smartphone will cost us absolutely nothing. Today we are used to ad-crowded websites and
apps, and probably in the future, it will be enough for us to agree to display ads on the lock screen or in apps.
Can I get a smartphone for free right now?
This is unlikely, although these days there are gadgets with amazingly low cost. All indications are that we are heading towards a 'free' future. In July, Indian manufacturer Ringing Bells announced the Freedom 251 smartphone for just $ 4.
With a production cost of about $ 20, this is a very low price tag, which, however, is easily explained: the company (albeit with the support of the state) compensates for $ 2 from each device sold, and the rest will be covered by advertisers whose applications will be pre-installed on the smartphone.
Since then, the hype about this ultra-affordable gadget has subsided, and Ringing Bells revised their optimistic plans to sell 2.5 million devices, lowering their forecast to just 5,000 devices. It is easy to guess that this was a publicity stunt, the purpose of which was to increase the number of sales of other smartphones of the Indian startup, but already with a more or less usual cost in the region of $ 60-65. Another Indian brand tried to do the same, unveiling the Docoss X1 smartphone with a price tag of Rs 188 ($ 13) in April – but, like the Freedom 251, it did not live up to the expectations of its creators, failing at the start of sales.
In Western countries, it is now impossible to implement the idea of a free (or at least prohibitively cheap) phone for two reasons: firstly, buyers in these countries want to have only a high quality device, and secondly, local users will never want to put up with the presence of pre-installed ad applications on your gadget. But
at the same time, camera phones like Alcatel Pixi 3 and Vodafone Smart are being sold in the Western Hemisphere at a price equal to 1/25 of the price of the base model iPhone, demonstrating how much they have decreased in our time the cost of manufacturing smartphones.
Can watching ads save you money?
The answer is simple – if you are not afraid to be known as a 'rogue' among your friends, and are also ready to be constantly connected to the Internet, then yes, you will be able to save money. In the UK, grocery giant Tesco has partnered with Australian firm Unlockd to create Tesco Mobile Xtras, an app that shows advertisements every time you unlock your smartphone. If necessary, you can quite simply turn off the display of ads, but if you view at least one advertising message per day for 21 days, then £ 3 (or $ 4) will be transferred to your personal account at the end of the month.
“Useful, timely and engaging advertising allows you to gather the maximum audience around a particular product,” says Tesco CEO Anthony Vollmer, who believes that a competent advertising campaign is the key to the success of any company.
Similar solutions are available in the Australian and US markets, where Sprint's customers can earn $ 5 on their account through the Boost Mobile app (a subsidiary of Sprint). Of course, Unlockd is just making the first awkward steps in trying to realize the ability to own a phone (or at least pay for mobile expenses) by watching ads. However, according to Unlockd CEO Matt Berryman, his company plans to enter the markets of other countries within the next six months – but the main goal is to unite those people in poor countries who previously could not afford mobile communications.
Can app developers provide us with free smartphones?
At the moment, the opportunity to get a high-tech gadget from your mobile operator for free looks like a pipe dream. Perhaps then the app developers will turn this dream into reality?
Erik Sefert, an expert on mobile marketing and freemium models, says that although today mobile developers go to the most risky and imaginative moves to get the user to install their application, such a concept will not be implemented, at least in foreseeable future. He explains his point of view quite simply: the efforts of one developer studio (albeit a very large one) will not be able to compensate for the production costs of a whole line of smartphones – if several large developers merged into one conglomerate, perhaps they have something and it turned out – but this will never happen, since competition in the mobile software market has reached record levels and not a single more or less promoted studio will under any circumstances make concessions by concluding a partnership agreement with business rivals.
What about Facebook?
With billions of dollars in revenue and presence in almost every ad on pocket gadgets, it would be logical to assume that FB, as one of the largest digital marketing platforms, should be ideally suited for this ad distribution model. But Sefert is confident that even giants like Facebook have no interest in ad-subsidized smartphones. “It will be very expensive and also risky in terms of choosing the 'right' ad and how users will react to it. – says the analyst, – In terms of technical characteristics, free gadgets will almost certainly be worse than their flagship counterparts, so they will be most in demand among users who are not particularly bothered by advertising on their phones today. ”
Предыдущие попытки Facebook выйти на хардверный рынок не привели ни к чему хорошему: достаточно вспомнить смартфон HTC First, который даже несмотря на ценник $0.99 (при условии заключения довольно выгодного контракта с AT&T) провалился еще at the start of sales. Amazon showed a similar desire, but his Fire Phone suffered the same fate. Subsequently, CEO Amazon Jeff Bezos said that, in his opinion, due to the huge cost of production today, corporations of the level Facebook are not ready to single-handedly take on the release of free smartphones.
Eventually
Without a doubt, ads on the lock screen or in pre-installed apps are the best way to create free gadgets. With the ever-decreasing prices for components and the growing struggle for user attention, it is likely that the day is not far off when buyers will be able to choose among several models of freely distributed mobile devices from different manufacturers. The main thing is that we – users – could adequately meet this idea, and then smartphones with far from budget characteristics will soon become 'free'.