I think the idea would be something along the lines of scale, and locking down an untargeted market. A sort of long-term plan, maybe hoping to corner a huge (greater than 1 billion) population of folks whose families might one day be targetable by ads for purchasing things and are already inside the ecosystem, or merely pulling a 1$ profit off a 35$ dollar phone... times 1.2 billion sales. I mean pie in the sky but I don't think "these people are poor" means there isn't money to be made.

There's also government social welfare contracts to consider, or good faith agreements with a government that allows you to corner a more profitable market (you provided five hundred thousand affordable phones to our people, so we'll let you lay fiber through our country / get through our Great Firewall / whatever).