Cell Phone Trend and Personalizing Mass Production

“Individuality: superior options, precision engineering and couture model in a alternative of stylish colours — as particular person as you might be”. That is the blurb for the brand new Motorola Razr, one of many new breeds of mobile phone flying off the cabinets. The place mobile have been as soon as marketed as an high-tech gadget, a tool filled with ingenious options, the brand new pattern is for style telephones. The foremost handset producers are actually providing seasonal collections, joint-venturing with well-known style designers, and emphasizing aesthetic options when marketing their products. Certainly, some corporations are scaling again the technical, but utilitarian options, providing less complicated however sleeker telephones; type over operate. Someplace alongside the evolutionary path of the cell phone, the gadget has reached the purpose the place it’s not thought-about a gadget, out there solely to the privileged few with the cash and/or technical savoir faire, however an unusual piece of equipment not in contrast to a wristwatch 폰테크.

For handset producers, there isn’t any profit in making an attempt to “out-tech” the competitors. The know-how has reached a stasis, cell telephones are dependable, small, WAP enabled, comprise innumerable clocks and alarms, embrace excessive decision cameras and MP3 gamers. And excepting some radical departure from the silicon chip, the present know-how can anticipate solely slight enhancements. For producers the query is the best way to proceed including worth to their product, for customers it’s a query of alternative. A report produced by ARCchart provides some perception into this new pattern: “For the buyer confronted with a variety of seemingly equivalent units from a technical perspective, the aesthetics of a tool can generate an emotional response to which they may ascribe a price and for which they may pay a premium”.

The rise of the style phone is inextricably linked with client’s want to distinguish themselves from different customers. The pursuit of individuality appears to be a precedence, no less than that’s what corporations like Motorola imagine. The staggering development within the mobile content material trade factors to client preoccupation with personalizing their mobiles. The catch-phrase, “Make it you personal”, is promoting ringtones, wallpapers, phone charms and ornamental cases, now it is promoting style telephones. Increasingly, it appears, what we personal defines us. Regardless of capitalizing on the pattern at lightening pace, handset producers aren’t the prophets personalization, the pattern in direction of personalized and style telephones is client pushed. In China, the place mobile phone saturation is excessive, it’s potential to see telephones worn on the wrist in handmade lace cases, or coated in stickers of pop stars and smiley faces.

In Japan, the omnipresent Whats up Kitty dangles from each schoolgirl’s phone. These small aesthetic additions are supposed to disclose one thing concerning the phone’s proprietor. A Samsung cell phone emblazoned with a picture of Diane von Furstenberg serves an identical function. As does the Roberto Cavali phone, or the Anna Sui phone. “Cell telephones have turn out to be a ubiquitous accessory– each lady has a mobile phone by her facet. I wished to create one which makes an announcement with a signature look”, declares Ms. Sui on her website. Making an announcement is pricey, a designer’s name on a phone will increase it is worth by a number of hundred {dollars}. It’s not a high-tech tool, it’s a designer accent.

Not surprisingly, engineers like Invoice Schweber are questioning who stole their glory. “Engineers do design, and by this we imply the laborious and slogging work of pulling collectively ICs and software program and resolving mechanical, thermal, power, show, format, protocol, and packaging points. Then a celeb comes alongside and takes all this tough work, places on a brand new case or shell–perhaps studded with crystals or glitter –and takes the majority of the credit. As soon as once more, engineers do the work and do not get the appreciation.” Lately, Nokia has undertaken a challenge with the design agency of Schulz and Webb, to discover the chances of personalised telephones. The Schulz and Webb weblog describes the challenge as ” how personalization of Nokia telephones can change their which means or influence culturally.

Giant-scale manufacture is inevitably distanced from the very exact social context of use. As soon as we usher in short-run manufacture, nonetheless, the mobile may be extra culturally located.” Nokia have realized, no less than, the inevitable paradox of mobile personalization. On the finish of the day, the mobile phone in your hand is a mass produced clone.