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Comment by edoo | Hacker News Reader

It will probably require a plan. Walmart tried selling a $10 prepaid smart phone and they were all bought up by tinkerers. A $10 phone means lots of hobby and maybe even some commercial projects get a cell phone mounted as a touchscreen interface.

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In Indonesia, phone plans is not popular. Heck, I can probably say 80% use prepaid. Prepaid is easier to get, cheaper, doesn't require verification (in practice), and promotions heavily favor new SIM cards (so it's very common for people to change number since it's cheaper to get new one vs maintaining it).

source: I'm Indonesian (but I use postpaid).

Actually it does not. $7 in India (or i.e. my home country, or some other relatively poor countries) is not the same as $7 in US. Plus, these phones don't have a touch screen and are much cheaper to make than the Walmart Android phones.

How is that a problem?

Because they were sold as loss leaders on the assumption that people would be paying for time/data on the network.

I don’t think this phone is being sold as a loss leader, though.

I wouldn't be so sure, though it seems more like a Amazon-type play than an ISP pushing plans:

"Customers can get a WizPhone WP006 from vending machines at more than 10,000 Alfamart stores for just USD$7 (IDR99,000)1. Then, with the built-in AllWizapp, customers can unlock shopping benefits in Alfamart by scanning barcodes on each product and making their purchase directly via the app on their WizPhone."

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