This many, in India. Fully paid up. Without a contract. All for $170.
That’s compared to the upfront cost of an iPhone on contract in the United States, which is $200. For $650, the minimum full price of a brand new iPhone 6, you could buy 26 of the Intex Cloud FX, the Firefox OS phone.
Quartz went to India with a $200 budget and bought some of the cheaper devices on offer. The most expensive was $62. The cheapest was $32. They all work fine and are comparable with the original iPhone released in 2007.
To understand how technology—and economics—have progressed to a stage where an advanced computing device that can make calls, access the internet, take photos, keep you in touch with people around the world for free, and be heard anywhere on the planet has become cheap enough for more than half of the world’s population to afford it, read the full story here.