70 Percent Of The World Uses Prepaid Phones

Tweet

A bit of follow-up to yesterday’s story about the two iPhones emerges–remember how we were making the inference that Apple might want to look at getting a stake in the prepaid cell phone market? As it turns out, that market is a whole lot bigger than you might think.

A recent study from the folks at Asymco shows that somewhere around three out of every ten cell phones sold worldwide are “post-pay”, or phones in which you pay a regular bill. The remaining seven are pre-pay, phones like Tracfone, Boost Mobile and others.

Indeed, they broke it down further by country and got some disturbing results. For instance, according to their survey, almost every cell phone sold in Africa is a pre-pay phone. An entire continent of pre-pay phone users! The Asia-Pacific cell phone market is actually roughly five times larger than Apple’s playing in, with something like 80 percent of the market being pre-paid users. Most every other market, with the exception of the United States and Canada, virtually doubles (or more in many cases) once pre-paid users are considered.

And that lends a lot of credence to the earlier Deutsche Bank analysis about how Apple may be readying a slightly upgraded iPhone 4 to step into the pre-paid market. Mostly because it’s a big market. A whole lot bigger, in fact, than many may have expected. Turns out there are a lot of people out there willing to shell out a fairly hefty sum for a new phone if it means they control the length of their plan and how much time they have to spend on the phone. It’s a big market, and even a company as cash-flush as Apple can’t afford to ignore a big market for long. Plus, Apple quality would draw a whole lot of people into the brand from the pre-paid market, which has long been heavily populated with dumb phones and phones that just don’t do much.

So what do you guys think? Is the time right for Apple to take an iPhone to the pre-paid market? Would you buy one if it didn’t come with a contract? Hit the comments section and tell us what you think!