Good design not a ‘nice-to-have’
It’s being highlighted as a survival issue for cellular handset manfacturers and cellular network providers in the UK media.
“The networks are looking at how much revenue they are
making from each handset,” says Rockman. “They will know that they make
more money from a Nokia [usable] phone than from another model. It may
be a very small amount per user, but you are dealing with very large
numbers of people.”
and
“OK, I’m just going to come right out and say it: Ericsson lost $2.3bn
on mobile phone handsets last year because its products are ugly. We
all know it, but are too polite to say so. So instead we talk about
poor market segmentation, or excessive costs, or a slow product cycle.
All true; but if the handsets had been prettier, these would have been
merely glitches.”
The FT article is a little off-base in my opinion,
especially when the writer refers to palmpilots, but makes good points
about the initimate and emotional nature of design for personal
technology.
Petafloptimism 