Aggressive plans from prepaid wireless companies have now made the prices of the smartphones more affordable for users. Most of the companies presently offer smartphones as a part of their prepaid wireless plans. And it is only natural that other competitors too will add smartphones to their lineups soon.

The U.S. cell phone market was dominated for years by the post-paid business model. To gain market share the post paid wireless providers subsidized phones to an extent where some handsets are even given for free.

The prepaid market in the U.S. was largely left to young consumers, who are price-sensitive and consider credit risks. These customers paid for their cell phone service in advance and they would buy the phones outright without any funding.

The financial crisis gradually forced the post paid customers to switch over to pre paid wireless plans for cost cutting. However the drawback was that the pre paid providers lacked the option of good phones.

The providers having realized it have now started adding smartphones to their product portfolios, which will open the market to a new set of customers. The snag for consumers is that these phones are not subsidized. But plans to overcome the obstacle by providing better offers and plans are being thought of by providers.

The question remains if the prepaid operators can continue their aggressive pricing when more sophisticated, data-hungry devices come on the network? Presently prepaid operators are offering BlackBerry phones, which are far more network efficient than devices like a Google Android phone.

“Adding smartphones as an option in prepaid means that prepaid is no longer a compromised offering,” said Neil Lindsay, chief marketing officer for Sprint Prepaid products. In other words, the pre paid providers will now give a strong competition to the former market rulers in wireless networks.

Smartphones are the future of mobile. It is evident with the growth in sales of these web enabled devices, outpacing that of the traditional phones. It is estimated that in the future, significant increase in sales will differ in shipments!

And by the time it happens, prepaid wireless companies want to capitalize the market by offering more affordable plans than the larger wireless providers.

Basically the future consumer has a variety of offers to choose from and why not? She remains the ruler of the market!