The Real Smartphone Wars Have Only Just Begun

Seventy percent of the world relies on pre-pay cell phones and their tariffs and unsubsidized handset prices.

This may come as a surprise to US consumers, used to two-year contracts and handset prices that sometimes cost nothing. But it also highlights something surprising: All the battles we've heard about so far in the rapidly growing smartphone market are really only addressing 30% of the globe. The real war is about to begin. Yet another statistic for you to think about: 40% of European phone buyers, according to a recent survey, are planning on buying an iPhone next--twice as many as plan on buying an Android device, and this is a region where nearly half of the phones sold are on a pre-pay basis. Do you see where we're going with this? Nearly everything we think about the smartphone wars rests on relatively few markets, and in the case of the U.S., mostly on contracted, post-pay vendor models.

As smartphone sales explode around the world, Android is certainly the most popular OS for now--it's taking up the gap that the demise of Nokia's Symbian-powered feature phones once occupied. But if Apple really does bring its "luxury" iPhone to a lower price, then it will target that 70% global space that we tend to forget about. Though probably not for long