Re: [Make-wifi-fast] [Cerowrt-devel] arstechnica confirms tp-link router lockdown

[Jonathan Morton <chromatix99@gmail.com>]

> On 13 Mar, 2016, at 19:40, moeller0 <moeller0@gmx.de> wrote:
> 
> Please note that the classic Nokia phone is dead as a doornail as far as popularity is concerned; that might speak against their ease of use compared with touch screen “smart phones”… (take home message might simply be “aim for a touch screen”)

The first hit when Googling for “nokia feature phone sales figures” threw up a fairly recent article (http://www.ibtimes.com/microsoft-making-more-money-sales-feature-phones-smartphones-2154087) which states that:

1) Microsoft (which bought Nokia’s phone business) made more money from feature phones (the ones with tiny screens and physical keypads) than from smartphones that quarter.  Since the ASP of a feature-phone is much lower than a smartphone, you can make the obvious conclusions about how *many* sold in each category.

2) Sales of feature phones actually *increased* over the previous quarter, and not by a trivial factor.

Although the article then goes on to predict the complete demise of the feature-phone segment, that conclusion does not seem to be supported by the facts it quotes.  It also mentions that feature-phones (with certain specific design features such as large buttons) are preferred by the elderly, even though touchscreen phones have larger screens and thus, theoretically, more space for large fonts.

One factor you may not have considered is that feature-phones still sell very well in the third world, mainly because they’re durable, power-efficient and cheap, but their ease of use surely doesn’t hurt there.

The *second* hit from that Google search is Wikipedia’s list of best-selling phones.  Top of the list are the venerable Nokia 1100 and 1110, which together sold *half a billion* units over their lifetime.  The famous 3310 sold “only” 150 million - and I still have mine.  It’s on its third battery, which lasts an entire week on standby.

 - Jonathan Morton