From BBC News:
The Vodafone 150, unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, will sell for “below $15″ (£10) and is aimed at the developing world.
It will initially be launched in India, Turkey and eight African countries including Lesotho, Kenya and Ghana.
The UN predicts that mobile ownership will reach 5bn in 2010, with most growth in the developing world.
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) said that demand was being driven by people using their phones to access banking and mobile health services, the ITU said.
“Even the simplest, low-end mobile phone can do so much to improve healthcare in the developing world,” said ITU secretary general Dr Hamadoun Toure.
For example, he said, SMS can be used to “deliver instructions on when and how to take complex medication such as anti-retrovirals or vaccines”.
“It’s such a simple thing to do, and yet it saves millions of dollars,” he said.
In India people already can buy inexpensive phones that have pretty good feature set. So I am not sure how this new phone plays out.
But I agree about the potential of mobile healthcare. Our company MDava provides exactly the solution mentioned above. We have a platform for providing personalized medcine instructions to large scale population.