The mobile industry has driven the wholesale cost of mobile phones to below US$ 30 as part of the GSM Association (GSMA) programme to make mobile telephony affordable for people in developing countries. This marks the second phase of the programme to "connect the unconnected" and GSMA expects to order six million of these low-cost handsets from Motorola.

"To get below US$ 30 per handset is a milestone achievement," said Craig Ehrlich, Chairman of the GSMA, the global trade association for the world's GSM mobile operators. "Today's news cements the formation of a whole new market segment for the mobile industry and will bring the benefits of mobile communications to a huge swathe of people in developing countries."

At the 3GSM World Congress in Singapore, Rob Conway, Chief Executive and board member of the GSMA, announced today that Motorola has been selected to supply the phase-two handset. "Motorola won thanks to a combination of a portfolio starting from sub-US$30, together with other key factors such as after-sales support, local service, brand presence and a choice of low-cost handset models including an exclusive product, the C113a for this programme," said Conway.

The 10 operators supporting the second phase of the GSMA's Emerging Market Handset programme expect to order about 6 million of these low-cost handsets from Motorola. The GSMA programme, which is chaired by Erik Aas, the Chief Executive of Grameen Phone Ltd. of Bangladesh, is supported by some of the leading operators in emerging markets - AIS, Bharti, BPL, Globe Telecom, Hutchison Essar, IDEA Cellular, MTN Group, Orascom Telecom, Telenor and Vodacom.

Motorola also won phase one of the programme with its family of handsets based on the C11X platform. During this first phase, EMH handsets were supplied into 17 countries through 10 participating operators.