We will usher in the era of cheap smartphones

iphone bare-metal price 649 dollars. But other manufacturers are talking about a 35-dollar smartphone that could even reach $25 trillion. That may explain why Apple has been keen to sue for patent issues and why the company has spent a lot more than last year on Itsactions to develop new features. On May 2, the court ruled that Samsung had copied Apple's features, design and technology, ordering it to compensate for 119 million of dollars in damages. But damages will not delay the industry's big trend: We will enter the era of cheap smartphone revolutions. According to market research company Strategy analytics,2014 in the first quarter of the year's smartphone shipments of about 285 million, this year's shipments will be more than 1 billion departments. Samsung and Apple will occupy about half of them. The smartphone business is very lucrative. Research firm Isuppli is dismantling smartphones to understand their material costs. The company estimates that the cost of materials for the 16GB iphone 5S is 191 dollars, but the contract price for the product is 649 dollars. The cost of the IPhone 5C is 166 dollars and no contract price of 549 dollars. The cost of the Samsung Galaxy S5 material is just 251 dollars. But we are not buying chips and glass. We pay for the experience of looking, feeling and touching, buying software, operating systems, user interfaces, and applications. Samsung and 85% non-Apple smartphones use the Android system, which is provided free of charge by Google (Weibo) to compensate for the cost of Android development by selling search ads. Apple says its software, unlike Android, should not be offered for free. The company has filed patent lawsuits against Samsung and HTC to slow the development of Android and try to maintain the value of Apple's distinctive features. But it's been 7 years since the iphone was launched. Once the consumer realizes that your product is not too different from the competitor, the level of commercialization will increase dramatically. When the PC was first launched, it sold for 5000 dollars. Google Now sells laptops with only 249 dollars. Smartphones will also face similar downward pressure on prices. As Business Insider reported at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona in February this year, the discussion focused on a Chinese manufacturer showing a 35 dollar smartphone and Firefox trying to launch a 25-dollar smart phone. We are entering a new era-call it the post-iphone era. Cheap, intelligent, universal. Profits will converge on the best services available for smartphones. Facebook will be more reliant on its mobile ad sales. Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram are all driven by smartphones to boost growth. Without smartphones, Uber and hundreds of new apps will no longer exist. It is reported that Apple intends to buy beats Audi with 3.2 billion dollarsO, the deal is reasonable. The goal is to scramble for 1 billion smartphone shipments. Once shipments reach 3 billion, 4 billion? First, very low-cost smartphones will have a big impact on the global economy: smartphones are a productivity platform that can be used to create wealth. Americans may spend most of their mobile phone time playing games, but developing countries can make ends meet with 35 of dollars in smartphones. Around 20% of the world's population earns less than 2 dollars a year, and smartphone prices are equivalent to a year's worth of income over the years, but are now as low as 3 weeks. Now, this has become an anti-poverty project. Google has launched project Whye projects to bring the Internet to rural and developing regions through high-altitude balloons. Facebook and Google are aggressively investing in drones to recycle and provide mobile connectivity. Poor mountain villages and towns will eventually get a platform to escape despair. Now we need a variety of applications to take advantage of the 5-dollar day of workers to peruse files, photos, blueprints, and anything that requires human cognitive skills that have not yet and may never be done through artificial intelligence algorithms. That is the biggest challenge facing Silicon Valley. For consumers in the rich world, the good news is that Samsung and Apple will struggle to maintain the profitability of high-end products and will compete to develop features. We have seen Apple launch Touch ID fingerprint recognizer. Samsung has launched an eye-tracking function. Apple's Siri can answer the question. Samsung offers Galaxy Gear watches, paired with the company's mobile phone. None of this proves that 649 dollars is worth the money. What features will be maintained? Big screen? Flexible, foldable screen? Fitness tracker? Google glasses? A hand ring connected via Bluetooth? Mobile payment? A medical sensor that tracks heartbeat and glucose levels? We will wait and see.