If you’ve ever tossed a strand of spaghetti against a refrigerator to see if it sticks-and, therefore, is fully cooked-then you have a sense of what handset vendors and carriers go through each fall.
The analogy is inexact because the issue isn’t whether that spaghetti is cooked, but whether your family, friends or customers wish to eat spaghetti. If they really want a hamburger, you’ve got a problem.
Of course, handset vendors and carriers have a lot of data on who their customers are, what devices they’ve been using and how to design an appealing product for them. Marketing obviously helps shine a spotlight on signature offerings. But which handsets will find traction in the market this fall still depends on consumers’ rapidly evolving appetites and preferences.
The beauty of this business is that no one really knows what will stick. But based on the feature sets and price points that have attracted consumers all year to this point, two analysts said that messaging and music-the means of social networking and the universal digital entertainment, respectively-would continue to drive holiday sales.
Social-networking monsters
That means carriers with increasing frequency are bundling handsets and accessories-particularly memory cards and headsets-to provide a full out-of-box experience. Small wonder then that memory cards and headsets are, in fact, the leading accessories as well. And 3G handsets-be they CDMA2000 1x EV-DO W-CDMA/HSDPA-are being touted as broadband goes mobile. AT&T Mobility, for instance, uses a blazing ball as a 3G icon on its online handset offerings-just in case the consumer can get past the pink flip phones and think in technology terms.
The top-tier carriers may also bolster their high-tier offerings as they ponder whether a certain, well-hyped product with a unique user interface and touchscreen has helped renew Americans’ perception of mobile devices’ real value. (See? I wrote a sentence without mentioning the Apple iPhone-oops!) Thus many vendors and carriers have gone ahead with high-tier devices positioned as premium products, looking for solid margins, profits and brand burnishing.
Despite the hype over mobile TV and touchscreens, the consumer is a social-networking, e-mail, text message monster who chills to music, according to analyst Avi Greengart at Current Analysis.
Device details
So, what’s out there? (All cited prices are with two-year contract.)
Though it’s not new, AT&T Mobility has a big stake in its re-priced offer of the 8 GB iPhone at $400. What is new is that, with the third quarter over, the industry should be seeing data soon on whether the carrier’s exclusive deal with Apple Inc. really paid off in terms of net subscriber adds (and losses at competitors) and perhaps even a bump in average revenue per user. Motorola Inc.’s Razr2 also launched well ahead of the “holidaze,” with the v9 at AT&T for $300 and other models for each top-tier carrier. The Razr2’s presumed role in resurrecting Moto’s fortunes will be avidly examined by pundits.
AT&T Mobility in early October also was emphasizing Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications’ new W580i, an $80 Walkman-branded, slim-slider phone featuring multimedia. The carrier also touted the LG Electronics Co. Trax phone, a $130 flip device with a requisite array of multimedia and messaging features.
Verizon Wireless recently made a splash with exclusive refreshments to its portfolio. But pricing information awaits the phones’ actual launches, expected by Thanksgiving.
The LG Chocolate has gotten an upgrade, particularly in memory expansion to 2 gigabytes or 4 GB with a microSD card. (Cards offering 6 GB and 8 GB will be available by year’s end, Verizon Wireless said.) The carrier recently noted that the Chocolate had sold 3.4 million units in its one-year life at the carrier, which translates to 850,000 per quarter-a not-too-distant approximation of the iPhone’s first-quarter-in-market volume trajectory, clearly the carrier’s intended comparison.
The new LG Venus is a touchscreen, bar-style handset with slide-out keypad, also for $130. The front offers two displays, one for a media menu, the other a touch-sensitive screen that changes to reflect the current application, eliminating external buttons.
The LG Voyager, due next month, features a 2.8-inch touchscreen for all functions. But wait! The phone opens to reveal a QWERTY keypad as well-an option oft-cited as missing from the you-know-who-phone.
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. also delivered its new Juke handset to Verizon Wireless. The Juke is slim in the width department (“slim” usually refers to depth) and swivels open to describe an object twice as long as the closed handset. It offers 2 GB of onboard memory, a cable for sideloading music and a headset for $100.
Sprint Nextel Corp. just launched Palm Inc.’s Centro, the vendor’s smallest smartphone selling for $100. The device has earned plaudits as a step along the road to Palm’s recovery, though that’s one step in a journey of unknown length. The Centro offers access to the carrier’s Power Vision services, including mobile TV and picture mail.
In addition, the device offers 64 MB of onboard memory and up to 4 GB with memory card, a classic example of the new dividing line among handsets: either the device packs significant onboard memory (a selling point brought home by the iPhone) or the device offers minimal onboard memory and the consumer pays for expansion with various capacity cards.
Sprint Nextel also has announced that the fourth quarter will see it rushing a few handsets to market, hoping to catch the holiday-induced wave. The carrier recently announced that the HTC Corp. Touch, LG Rumor and BlackBerry Pearl are set to launch during the fourth quarter.
T-Mobile USA Inc. is promising an updated Sidekick LX, and a Sidekick Slide, prices unknown. Fans of the original device can sign up (“pre-register”) to buy them when they’re available-a truly great concept in consumer marketing that reflects either hype or actual device-oriented fan bases. The LX is reputedly slimmer and “sleeker” (typically implying rounded edges) and, key to this constituency, the screen has been up-sized. The Slide is made by Motorola. (the Sidekick is made by Danger) and offers a slide-up screen, compact QWERTY keypad and Sidekick messaging capabilities.
The Wing ($300) is a T-Mobile USA-branded HTC touchscreen product with slide-out screen and QWERTY keypad offering Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile 6, which seeks to provide the desktop experience on the fly with HTML browsing and HTML-supported e-mail.
The BlackBerry Curve 8320 at $250 supports T-Mobile USA’s HotSpot@Home service that runs Wi-Fi. The device includes the requisite multimedia capabilities, including a 2-megapixel camera.
