Mannerisms

Vodafone's new handset is made by ZTE of China. But over 15 months ago, in February 2006, TTPCom, since then bought by Motorola, announced a reference design for a $20 phone. Now, as we speak, Motorola is selling its MotoFone which uses an E-Ink monochrome display, for £15 in the High Street.

By now, the effect of Moore's Law alone should have shaved 40 per cent off the cost of TTPCom reference design which would suggest a price of $12, while Infineon has a single-chip solution which allows a BOM of $16 this year.

Last month UC Berkeley's Centre for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) working with Taiwanese contract manufacturers Hon Hai Precision Industry, Compal Communications and Quanta Computer said they were working to produce a $10 handset within two years.

The normal effects of the learning curve suggest that we should be reaching the $10 mobile well within the two year period set by CITRIS.

I think this is quite a nice thing, and not only for the emerging economies of the world for which ultra low-cost phones are currently intended.

It means we can all have loads of phones, just as we have loads of watches, and, with duplicate SIMs, we'll be able to keep a phone wherever we might want one, car, garden, office etc, and the girls can have one to fit every colour of every outfit.

One thing bothers me. Why have all the Dick Tracey watches only been protoypes, never production versions?