$80 in Kenya, with probably market-rate voice and data (ie, reasonably cheap) will never see the light in the USA.
First you have the IP battles (patents, trade-dress, etc), then you have a consolidated and generally anti-innovation telecom monopoly.
What will happen is that the feature and dumb phone will be killed by cheap Androids... this will be mildly threatening to (currently) weak smartphone lines like WP7 and Blackberry, but will leave the iPhone unscathed for the near future.
Any prognostication more than 2 years out is useless (what happens when the real FacePhone hits?)
Not as surprised as they are when they realize how much they paid for the expensive phone, in my experience. Regardless of brand, it's baffling to me why people don't just wait a few months and buy a phone outright instead of getting the one with the very expensive contract.
Have you seen that MetroPCS commercial where the dumb kid takes the glittering gold phone only to to find himself swinging from a rope while the presenter admonishes 'Silly Billy! The contract is how the trap is sprung!' They should get some sort of award for promoting financial literacy at the same time as marketing their service.
I pay $50/month for my line and another $35 for my wife. I don't spend a lot of time on the phone and I don't text at all, but I have unlimited data. More importantly, I barely bother to look at my bill because I know what it's going to be in advance. The lack of admin more than makes up for any minor economic inefficiencies - I don't grudge the phone company making a profit off my relative underuse of the voice service.
I'd be surprised if it's not available even cheaper through other channels, you can certainly buy it cheaper here in Australia on ebay.
(I bought the successor to the Ideos, the Huawei Sonic, for $188AU last week. My previous smartphone was an iPhone 3GS, and the Sonic compares very favourably to it - even before you consider price.)
First you have the IP battles (patents, trade-dress, etc), then you have a consolidated and generally anti-innovation telecom monopoly.
What will happen is that the feature and dumb phone will be killed by cheap Androids... this will be mildly threatening to (currently) weak smartphone lines like WP7 and Blackberry, but will leave the iPhone unscathed for the near future.
Any prognostication more than 2 years out is useless (what happens when the real FacePhone hits?)