I'm a bit on a history trip at the moment because it's interesting to discover what has changed in a decade which might help a bit to estimate how things will develop in the future. Let's have a look at entry level phones today vs. 10 years ago.
The cheapest phones are now available for €29.- in the rummage table while what I would consider entry level phones from back then such as the Bosch 738 I had at the time cost in the order of 200 euros, had a two year contract with a basic monthly subscription fee attached and were bought after a lengthy discussion an form fill-out session in a shop. In other words, from a price point and sales experience point of view, the difference is quite significant.
From a feature point of view not much has changed compared to entry level phones 10 years ago. Still, entry level phones are very voice and SMS centric and the cheapest of them come without GPRS and basic Internet functionality. That comes for a couple of Euros extra, however. Also, most entry level phones are only GSM dual frequency capable. The main difference between then and now is size, weight and the color screen, although on entry level devices, resolution is quite poor. Nevertheless, back 10 years ago, such displays would have been stunning.
So how will entry level phones look like in 10 years from now? From a price point of view a few additional euros might be cut but then that's just about it and won't matter a lot. Also, what is there beyond the rummage table? Get a surprise phone in every 20th pack of cereal? So while in the past 10 years it was all about driving cost out of the entry level segment it seems to be this might gradually change into putting additional features in without increasing the price.
With that in mind I think it's quite reasonable to assume that (basic) Internet connectivity will go into such devices with (ultra) thin clients for fashionable services such as Instant Messaging, e-mail, Facebook and other social networking sites and in the future whatever replaces or complements it. Flash memory becomes cheaper by the day and at some point, a euro or two extra buys you enough storage capacity to keep your music library with you even with very inexpensive phones. Same goes for the camera and image storage.
What do you think?
In pictures, you can see how Blackberry evolved in last 10 years here:
http://3g4g.blogspot.com/2010/07/interesting-pic-blackberry-evolution.html
Your comparison is very interesting indeed. Especially when you compare the price for an Android phone now to a cheap phone then. You will see that in 10 years from now, IMHO sooner, smartphones with great internet and app capability will be available for a very low price.
And that will also lead to much greater availability of the internet in general and even computing devices in developing countries. The GSM mobile phones have brought long distant communication to literally billions of people, many of whom don’t own a computer or have (private) internet access now.
The question is how fast and how cheap providers in developing nations will offer data plans. If the price will go down sooner, as in low prices within 5 compared to 15 years, Android will become a very dominant computing platform overall.
Everyone will be running it and everyone will write software for it. Even the bad guys. It will be the Windows mono culture security nightmare all over again.
If the switch takes longer other platforms will have time to establish themselves. Bada and Meego come to mind. Even Symbian, which ist still going very strong, alas weak on the app and internet aspects, could make a comeback if other phone makers pick it up again, because it is now free.