Crossing the Threshold: Gaining Access Into the Third World Mobile Phone Market

Today’s world is more connected than ever. Nearly one billon plus are connected through computers or cell phones. As the third world climbs its way into industrialization, their enormous populations are beginning to demand more connectivity. This group’s population is 80 percent of the world’s population. Economists say this group is a ten trillion dollar market, and as of now nearly completely untapped. Currently, most of the developing world’s people cannot afford full size computers or laptops. However, mobile phones fall into their income range. With continuing advances, mobile phones have now become mini computers, allowing the users to surf the internet, check email, and use applications. For the average third world person, it gives them all the utility needed to better accomplish their daily tasks. This market is enormous, and has only begun to be tapped.

Unfortunately, despite having superior designs, most traditional semiconductor companies are locked out of this market due to their inability to cheaply manufacture application specific integrated circuits or ASIC’s. ASIC’s are chips that can perform a single defined task very efficiently. This translates into longer battery life, and for a mobile phone this is crucial. The main reason traditional semiconductor companies cannot easily enter this market is due to their manufacturing costs. ASIC’s are designed to cater to specific products. For example, an IPod ASIC would not work in a Zune, despite doing the same function. Also, since the main market for mobile phones is consumers, products on average have very short life spans either being fads or being taken over by newer designs. Under the current paradigm, short of a major overhaul in the way semiconductors are manufactured, traditional semiconductor manufacturers cannot compete in this market.

Fortunately, if the paradigm is changed to include manufacturing in space, traditional semiconductor companies can compete. Since space manufacturing involves natural vacuum and microgravity, it is a MUCH less material intensive process. Space manufacturing would be a completely dry process, using plasma and gases instead of fluids for etching and cleaning. Fortunately, all these tools are available, being used in the next generation nanometer chips. With the addition of natural vacuum, the bulky vacuum pumps can be dropped from the system. Due to the dry chip manufacturing process and natural vacuum, many of the cleaning processes used on Earth become redundant, and can be dropped. This leads to 33% drop in the time it takes a chip to fabricated, from one month, to two and a half weeks. Also, due to the cleaner environment, fewer starts are needed to fix faults in the design. This combines to give the owner of the factory a much shorter response time, allowing them to capture the dynamic consumer electronic markets. With consistent transportation, the owner can quickly gain market share, and pay off the fixed capital costs of the factory.