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Phone
makers turn to bright colours, funky textures & personalisation
Bright colors, funky textures and personalisation are coming to a
smartphone near you as mobile phone makers turn to fashion to buoy sales in
a crowded market.
Apple Inc and Google Inc's Motorola are among those trying to score style
points as game-changing technological innovation becomes harder to achieve
in the maturing business. Since the first touchscreen iPhone hit the market
in 2007, software features have become easier to replicate and improvements
in speed, weight, display size and resolution have become routine. The
explosion of me-too products is already hurting profit margins and nibbling
at Apple and Samsung Electronic Co Ltd's market share.
Time to bring out the paintbrush. Apple has invited reporters to an event
on Tuesday where it is expected to introduce new iPhones in a much broader
palette of colors, perhaps even gold.
One-time leader Motorola, now owned by Google, is trying to win back
consumers with the Moto X, relying partly on customized colors and, soon to
come, engravings and unusual casing materials such as wood. Robert Brunner,
founder of design consultancy Ammunition and a former Apple industrial
design chief, said personalisation is a well-worn tactic employed when a
product's uniqueness fades.
Much of the speculation around new iPhones has focused on colors and
material, in marked contrast to previous years when hopes ran high for a
breakthrough feature.
PERSONALISATION IS KEY
The consumer electronics industry lives and dies by innovation, and
resorting to aesthetics is at best a stop-gap measure until frequently
talked about new technologies such as fingerprint identification,
holographics or flexible displays become reality.
Smartphone shipments grew 52% in the second quarter, according to research
firm IDC. But the market is getting crowded, with everyone from Alcatel Lucent
to China's Huawei producing an abundance of look-alike phones based on
Google's Android software.
Consumers face a sea of “rectangles that are black and white” that all use
similar software and capabilities, said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with
research firm Gartner. “So you need that instant hook in the store to get
people to pay attention, and that comes from the fashion and style.”
Nokia's phone business, soon to be part of Microsoft Corp , was one of the
first to try colour. Nokia's Windows-powered Lumias came in a variety of
shades from blue and red to yellow, helping boost shipments by 76% in the
second quarter and outpacing the overall market's growth rate. “We have
always believed technology is highly personal, highly individual,” said Yves
Behar, the CEO at Jawbone, who has designed a successful line of
customisable gadgets including the Up wristband and Jambox wireless
speakers.
“We get more people wanting to customise their Jambox than we get people
not wanting to.” Making more stylish phones, however, can increase
production costs and make inventory management more challenging. Also,
taste varies from region to region.
So success in the fashion game requires mastering new supply chain and
manufacturing skills.
BUILT TO ORDER
In 2010, Apple had to delay the launch of the white iPhone 4 twice,
citing manufacturing challenges. While the company did not provide details,
speculation ranged from colormatching difficulties to an issue with the
device's back light. More recently, Motorola delayed offering the
personalised engravings it promised for the Moto X, and the special wood
panels that consumers can choose for their phones will not be available
until later this year.
To help with logistics, Motorola is using a Flextronics International contract
facility near Dallas that can custombuild phones and ship within 6 days.
Its long-term target is 4 days. That kind of customisation requires a
completely different supply chain system, said Massachusetts Institute of
Technology professor David Simchi-Levi. Instead of optimising for the
lowest cost components, a build-to-order model needs to focus on speed,
said Simchi-Levi, who has previously consulted for Dell.
Done right, the build-to-order model can provide flexibility to respond to
demand: maintaining stockpiles of components means less risk than keeping
inventory of finished goods. Analysts have said the impact of Motorola's
new strategy on its profit margins is unclear. Mark Randall, the company's
senior vice-president of supply chain, said it knows a build-to-order model
will not be easy but is convinced that is the right approach for today's
market.
Reuters
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