Qualcomm's senior director of business development Liat Ben-Zur has predicted a new revolution in mobile - featurephones.

But hang on, aren't we supposed to be heading for a future dominated by suped-up smartphones?

Not so, according to the Qualcomm market expert. Despite reports that smartphones would overtake their cheaper, less powerful brethren by as early as next year, she predicted that featurephones still have an important role to play in the mobile market.

Speaking at a briefing ahead of  the San Diego based company's big industry shindig, Uplinq, Ben-Zur said: "Obviously there's a big trend - everyone is moving towards smartphones but I believe by 2014 that 54 per cent of phones are still going to be feature phones.

"So there's a reality here that in the market there's a massive space for featurephones".

This prediction came despite the fact that Ben-Zur stated that there were 250 Qualcomm Snapdragon smartphones in production, as well as a further 40 tablet devices.

She went on to describe how Qualcomm's very own OS platform, Brew, could play a key role in the continued success of the featurephone.

"Brew is really meeting a need in the featurephone space with some sophisticated features and a usability that can rival some of the smartphone experiences, at a much lower price point."

Brew MP is described by Qualcomm as the first ever mobile phone OS to offer an app platform and can currently be found on many different handsets including the HTC Smart, which Pocket-lint got hands on with back in January at CES.

What do you guys think - is there still room for a device with less va-va-voom in the mobile arena, or is it smartphones all the way? Let us know the usual way...