Cellphones get bigger
I recently got a new cellphone, my old one having died a glorious and ignominious death. Poking through the store to find a good replacement, I was struck with the fact that the shiny new models on the shelf seemed to be the same size -- or even bigger -- than the one I needed to replace. Doesn't Moore's Law hold for cellphones?, I think I wondered aloud.
Certainly it does. But even though, by rights, in the eighteen months since I scored my now-dead, beautiful, blue phone (and, for that matter, in the apparently six years since it was released), though the technology has gotten smaller, companise have chosen not to minimize their devices, but rather to overload them with multiple features. My newcamera address book phone -- an LG VX6100, if you must know -- is at least three things in one, coming with just about all the amenities of my family's first digital camera and more: an 0.3-megapixel digital camera (complete with lenscover!); a 500-person address book; lots of features I haven't even looked at yet. And all I wanted was something to talk on that stores phone numbers!
But, that's aparently not the direction phones are going in, much to my dismay.
... And that, of course, is why i'm able to talk on my cellphone to begin with, why I'm able to blog this from an internet cafe, and why I'm not going to get what I want in a phone (minimalism): the market. Like it or not, it drives where companies are going to take this new world of communications.
It's also going to be dominated by the insane consumer. Apparently 59% of Americans have cellphones, a fact astounding to me, who got her first phone as she graduated from college, having had email and dorm phones to fill the communications need before then, and who can't really fathom what teenagers do with theirs, besides put sparkly covers on them and stick them in their painted-on, low-riding hip-huggers. (But then again, this blogger can't figure out what teenagers do with anything these days. This blogger feels old and jaded at age 24.)
Notable points from the article:
Certainly it does. But even though, by rights, in the eighteen months since I scored my now-dead, beautiful, blue phone (and, for that matter, in the apparently six years since it was released), though the technology has gotten smaller, companise have chosen not to minimize their devices, but rather to overload them with multiple features. My new
But, that's aparently not the direction phones are going in, much to my dismay.
"This industry is in a period of incredible flux," Mr. Zander [Motorola's CEO] said recently in his office in suburban Chicago. "The big challenge for every company over the next five years is to figure out what you are and how you make money."
... And that, of course, is why i'm able to talk on my cellphone to begin with, why I'm able to blog this from an internet cafe, and why I'm not going to get what I want in a phone (minimalism): the market. Like it or not, it drives where companies are going to take this new world of communications.
It's also going to be dominated by the insane consumer. Apparently 59% of Americans have cellphones, a fact astounding to me, who got her first phone as she graduated from college, having had email and dorm phones to fill the communications need before then, and who can't really fathom what teenagers do with theirs, besides put sparkly covers on them and stick them in their painted-on, low-riding hip-huggers. (But then again, this blogger can't figure out what teenagers do with anything these days. This blogger feels old and jaded at age 24.)
Notable points from the article:
- Apple's going to get into the market. Crap, I upgraded to an LG too soon! I want a sexy white phone to match my sexy white iPod and sexy white iBook. (Can you tell whom they snagged on their form-equal-to-function ploy?)
- Again, the sheer number of customers: "There are 172 million mobile phone subscribers in America, or 59 percent of the population. By 2009, cellphone ownership will rise to 69 percent, JupiterResearch, a technology research company, projects."
- "In surveys of cellphone users, respondents say there are three things they always take with them when they leave home: wallet, keys and cellphone." -- Okay, that's totally reasonable. That's what I take when I leave home. (And I'm the paradigmatic consumer, yes?) It goes on: "75 percent of cellphone owners in the United States kept their phones turned on and within reach 16 or more hours a day. And when asked if they had ever answered their mobile phones during sex, 15 percent said yes." -- Lines in the sand, people. Lines in the sand.
- "Camera phones are common today, and many people routinely take pictures with them. But only 15 percent of people with camera phones send pictures over wireless networks." -- So stop making them come with cameras automatically, and give me a skinny, just-talk phone!
posted by nori | 14:41
3 Comments:
A neighbor in my elevator today was carrying a new cellphone box, and complained about how cellphones are all bulky these days. Weird, she said -- can't they make these things any smaller? But there's a reason for this. Cell phone makers are desperately trying to figure out how to sell you a new kind of cell phone that's ultimately going to replace your laptop. Take cell/PDAs and blackberries -- they're not there yet, but they're examples of the kind of form factor that these companies are thinking about. The problem is that consumers don't like carrying around bigger things like blackberries (want to toss that into the pocket of your jeans?) and so those pesky consumers require a little retraining. Companies are building cell phones a little bigger every month and sticking new features on so that consumers get used to carrying multi-function devices of the size of a small book.
Of course, you point out that what you want is just something to talk on that stores phone numbers. So maybe the cell phone companies are betting wrong -- but they've got big advertising budgets, and design control over current phones -- so who knows?
Yeah, as you point out, the've got the big advertising budgets and design control. Phooey, as my mom would say. I want to be the archetypals consumer, which would mean that all my needs and desires get catered to (it would also mean that I'd end up buying a lot more gadgetry than I already do) -- but I'm not, and consumers seem to want the Blsackberry-like performance of every device within spitting distance, right down to the toaster. (And all I want in a toaster is something that browns bread on both sides -- something I haven't had in a good six months to a year. Tragedy.)
As for replacing my laptop -- you can have my iBook when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. (Wow, I can't believe I just said that.)
if u want an ipod, you can go to www.getipodsforfree.com and do an offer. follow the instructions and they'll actually send you a freeipod, no joke, there's reviews all over the internet
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