Forbes asked Richard Templeton: “How does the proliferation of extremely cheap cell phones impact TI financially?” His answer:
I was in India a month or two back. They have 80 million cell phone subscribers currently, and they added 5 million in January alone. They have operators projecting the number of users and subscribers in India at 300 million by 2010 and 600 million by 2015. This is going on in Africa, Indonesia, South America and Russia. I think this is early and I think it’s large.
And when you put a bunch of cell phones into a marketplace, you need a lot of infrastructure equipment. So we’re seeing nice growth in infrastructure equipment in the near term.
Longer term, it is important to refer to these markets as emerging markets. They are not low-end markets. Today, it’s an entry-level voice-centric phone. But I wouldn’t rule out that you find TV being delivered [through a cell phone] in India because it’s a society and a culture that loves its entertainment.
