The Hottest Phones for the Next Billion Users Aren’t Smartphones

Millions of first-time internet consumers from the Ivory Coast to India and Indonesia are connecting to the web on a new breed of device that only costs about $25. The gadgets look like the inexpensive Nokia phones that were big about two decades ago. But these hybrid phones, fueled by inexpensive mobile data, provide some basic apps and internet access in addition to calling and texting. Smart feature phones, as they are known, are one of the mobile phone industry’s fastest-growing and least-known segments, providing a simple way for some of the world’s poorest people to enter the internet economy. While global smartphone sales began sliding in 2018 as markets became saturated, smart feature phone shipments tripled to around 75 million from 2017; some 84 million are likely to be shipped in 2019.

The category was popularized by Reliance Jio, the telecom company backed by India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani. When its service started in 2016, executives realized millions of people who could afford its dirt-cheap data weren’t signing up because they couldn’t afford a smartphone. So the company developed the JioPhone, teaming up with Hong Kong-based KaiOS Technologies Inc., which makes the most widely used operating system powering smart feature phones globally. The software is designed for devices with limited memory and physical keypads. Recognizing smart feature phones’ potential to connect the next billion users, global tech companies including Facebook and its WhatsApp service, Alphabet’s Google and Twitter have tweaked their apps so they can be used on the devices. In 2018 Google invested $22 million in KaiOS.