*Warning*- I might have been extremely personal and biased while writing this post.
I absolutely can’t stand it when people are so caught up with their mobile phones all the time, particular when their not alone and in the company of other people. It is absolutely disgusting and vile when a person is constantly checking on their text msgs/bbms/emails when at the dinner table/bar/party or whatever social event. It’s stupid, it’s rude and it’s disrespectful. People nowadays are too easily distracted by mobile networking and I feel that it is reducing the genuineness and more importantly, purpose of socialization. Unfortunately, it seems like more and more people are starting to do it. Am I the only one who gets severely annoyed when a friend decides to juggle conversations with several other people over dinner or over a drink at a bar? Could be just another one of my pet peeves but certainly it isn’t irrational to claim that such abuse of mobile technology is destroying the very fabric of human interaction. It is like chewing the leftovers of pig feed, rinsing it with sulphuric acid and sewage water, and then spitting the contents into the face of everything that is real and pure in existence.
Maybe I took it a bit too far there, but you get my point.
ARGH!
ARGGGH!
Gawdaamit!
Anyways, I brought this topic up because I recently caught the commercials for the new windows phone.
In a highly competitive mobile technology market, branding is key. Microsoft tried to differentiate the image of its new product by setting it apart from other mobile phones. It touches the issue of cellphone over-usage, which was what I briefly touched on before. Microsoft has identified that many mobile phone users *aherm* (blackberry users) spend way too much time on their phones rather than in reality. Realizing that many consumers also feel the same way, the new windows phone is designed to get you in and out of your phone swiftly so that you don’t waste too much time on it. As a result, a simple yet stylish touch-screen interface that resembles the ‘dashboard’ on a mac was created. It displays everything you need to know on ur phone. It appeals to the simplistic and the ‘time is money’ minded fellow, and not so much to the ‘eventhough I don’t use many of my cellphone’s capabilities, it’s nice to know that I COULD’ type of person.
Personally, I think Microsoft does a great job setting the product’s image apart from lets say a blackberry or Iphone (both of which promote the never-ending functions of each phone) in the advertisement. However, I am skeptical of how successful the phone can be in that sense. Does less truly mean more in the technology industry? I mean, limiting the capabilities of a phone, and then making that a selling point seems like a contradiction. I think that most consumers would still be likely to purchase a blackberry or an Iphone or whatever that is out there in the market that is more technological defined and advanced than a windows phone.
Aside from that, I think that most people do not realize or agree that excessive mobile phone usage is really that big of a deal. Many consumers would disagree that such a problem actually exists (especially those who are avid bbm users). Some might even be repulsed by the windows 7 commercial. All in all, my first judgement, although quite quick, of this positioning scheme is that its target audience might only amount to a small bit of the overall market. Not many people are ready to believe that less is more in a phone.