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A Former Apple CEO Is Making Android Phones for Emerging Markets

Companies like John Sculley’s are aiming for ultra-affordable phones, but he could be butting heads with Google soon.

John Sculley, a former Apple CEO known for falling out with and then firing Steve Jobs in 1985, is, perhaps appropriately, designing Android phones for developing markets.

He's teaming up with San Francisco design firm Ammunition through a company called Obi Worldphone to create lower-end smartphones to "attract discerning young people in fast-growth markets in Asia, Africa and the Middle East."

Their first two phones, the SF1 and the SF1.5, will sell for $199 and $129 respectively, with the latter eschewing 4G LTE capabilities. Both will sport 3000 mAh batteries (about double the battery capacity of the iPhone 6), which is handy for places where work hours are longer and outlets are scarcer. The phones will be up for purchase starting in October.

The company is planning to debut the phones exclusively in markets where people might be buying their first smartphone, Recode reports. Countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia are ripe for Sculley's market—in the United Arab Emirates, the company was able to nab a 5 percent market share without "a homegrown design."

The company is taking a strategy that seems diametrically opposite to Apple's: low margins and low costs, while catering to the basic needs of lower-budget consumers. How it'll stand up to Google's aggressively affordable $30 budget smartphone program, however, remains to be seen.