Sprint's Intinct phone...stupid or just stupid?
- Thread starter Sheep
- Start date
You are obviously in a different demographic than I am, as I have 30-something year old friends who routinely ditch their perfectly working cell phones for the "next big thing". The number of people in my circle who actually get a new phone because the old one was completely worn out is much smaller than those who upgrade for the sake of upgrading. You'd be surprised by the power of the marketers.
I'd say that this has a lot more to do with the sort of company you keep than any sort of wide demographic "trend".
Counterpoint: NO ONE in "my circle" does anything with their cell phones but talk and send the occasional text. I am the only one who even used wireless web, and I upgrade my phone every two years. The only other person in my circle who comes close last bought a new cell phone in 2004.
I'm using my iPhone to post this reply right now.
Buying a cellphone of any kind as a status symbol is so ten years ago - unless one is very young or easily led by marketers. No doubt that a lot of folks do fall into both categories, or Apple itself would be a more marginal company than it is (and the iPhone less of a fifteen-minute sensation) - but that's never made it difficult for other companies to outcompete Apple for market share in a variety of areas.
A couple of things:
Apple is a consumer electronics company that does two things very well. They have fabulous designs and superb usability. They don't sell millions of iPods just because they're pretty, they sell because they're the best combination of utility and ease-of-use in the mobile music market. The same goes for the mobile computing segment, where they are making massive inroads, this time because OS X provides a far better 'fit' for consumer needs of productivity and ease-of-use than a Windows or Linux-based competitor.
There's nothing wrong with style when there is substance behind it.
As for iPhone, I love that it does all the things that I need in the easiest way possible. The innovation isn't the utility of the device in terms of apps, but the interface to those apps. The large multi-touch screen allows for a maximum of screen real-estate for a given application and the virtual keyboard is just as easy (for me) to use as a similarly-sized Blackberry with physical buttons.
