At this year’s Mobile World Congress the head of Bharti Airtel called for the industry to drive down the cost of smartphones to trigger the greater use of mobile data. Sunil Mittal, chairman and MD of India’s largest mobile operator, said that the cost of smartphones must start to fall and come much closer to the price of feature phones seen today in India. “The difficulty we have moving forward to the next business model is the lack of a cheap smartphone,” said Mittal. “A US$50 device would dramatically alter the landscape.” He added that the penetration of smartphones was only around 5 percent in India today, and much less in Africa.