Mobile devices have consumed the world. They’re the most successful consumer durable product of all time. Smartphones now get all the attention. In the current evolved state the two major smartphone platforms, iOS and Android) have revolutionized mobile devices by making them smarter through an abundance of  applications and services that satisfy almost any use-case. In the smartphone sector iOS and Android are a duopoly, with Android essentially the only option for anything non-Apple, albeit there are many ‘flavors’ of Android – especially in China.

Beyond smartphones, there are still around half a billion feature phones sold every year. These continue to serve the needs of the roughly two billion feature phones users globally. This is still a huge market catering to a diverse user base many of whom continue to buy and use feature phones in preference to smartphones. The reasons for adherence to feature phones are as diverse as the user base, but include

• Preference for simplicity
• Lighter, robust form-factors
• Longer battery life
• Lower cost

Some feature phone users also suffer from digital, economic or literacy divides and face barriers to adopt relatively expensive smartphones and data plans. Especially as low-cost smartphones tend to offer poor performance and poor quality.

This is a huge opportunity for the mobile industry, to help bridge the digital divide and enable these users to more fully participate in the digital economy, but on their terms.

A gap exists in terms of offering a solution that can form an ecosystem with different players contributing to bridge this divide.

This is where KaiOS Technologies comes into play with its web (HTML5) based - lightweight operating system with a user interface that can be optimized  for non-touch or feature phone form-factors.

KaiOS is already powering tens of millions of users. It has done this by striking the right partnerships with OEMs and operators across key markets.

KaiOS Key Ecosystem Partnerships so far

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