Do the ming thing
Looks like Motorola's investment in design strategy has paid off. From the makers of the very popular RAZR comes the MOTOMING A1200, now at an affordable price. The MING looks a lot like the MOTO PEBL but has a unique large screen touch pad.
The screen takes bout 80% of the phone and has a a transparent cover to protect the touch screen which gives it an almost flip phone look. The phone is easy to use, with a PDA feel. This user friendly phone has a 2 megapixel camera with video facility.
The best thing about this phone is that it comes with a 512 MB memory card which is more than any phone in the same price range, including the Nokia N72. The touchscreen gives a PDA interface. It also comes with an FM radio. It has document readers for word and Pdf, as well as real player that plays most formats of music. It is not a windows or symbian based phone but a linux based one (with an Opera browser), and hence wouldn't hang as often as a windows based device would.
The sad thing is that it is very fragile and must be handled with care. Second, once the transparent cover is scratched the whole beauty of the device is lost. It does not have document editors. It is not a complete PDA,but is a smartphone due to the touch screeen feature. MING is all about style and features.
Launched a year ago the MING was targetted at businessmen and was priced at Rs 35,000 initially. Due to change in marketing and pricing strategy as well as change in the pace of technology development it is now priced at approx. Rs 17,000. The phone comes with a data cable, extra two stylus, power cable,ear phones, leather cover and a 512 MB memory card.
The screen takes bout 80% of the phone and has a a transparent cover to protect the touch screen which gives it an almost flip phone look. The phone is easy to use, with a PDA feel. This user friendly phone has a 2 megapixel camera with video facility.
The best thing about this phone is that it comes with a 512 MB memory card which is more than any phone in the same price range, including the Nokia N72. The touchscreen gives a PDA interface. It also comes with an FM radio. It has document readers for word and Pdf, as well as real player that plays most formats of music. It is not a windows or symbian based phone but a linux based one (with an Opera browser), and hence wouldn't hang as often as a windows based device would.
The sad thing is that it is very fragile and must be handled with care. Second, once the transparent cover is scratched the whole beauty of the device is lost. It does not have document editors. It is not a complete PDA,but is a smartphone due to the touch screeen feature. MING is all about style and features.
Launched a year ago the MING was targetted at businessmen and was priced at Rs 35,000 initially. Due to change in marketing and pricing strategy as well as change in the pace of technology development it is now priced at approx. Rs 17,000. The phone comes with a data cable, extra two stylus, power cable,ear phones, leather cover and a 512 MB memory card.
posted by sush at 6:22 AM
3 Comments:
Your post makes you sound like a product manager! The handset market is so much like the movie market. There is no recipe for success. Features, performance, form factor, design, price, marketing budgets et al. even if put together, don't fully explain the success or failure of handset models. Blindly imitating a successful model can almost guarantee failure, just the way it happens in movies. Given that there are so many good phones out there, consumer preference is but random. The only driver of consumer preference seems to be advertising budget.
My advice to cellphone makers would be to cut down the number and frequency of new model introductions. If I were a brand manager at a cellphone company, I'd be heartbroken to realize how shortlived my brands are, even successful ones. I'd be angry at the absence of Johnie Walker Black Labels, IBM Thinkpads and Ford Model Ts in my portfolio of brands. It's perfectly fine and even necessary to invest money on R&D when it comes to high tech consumer goods. But at the same time, it's nonsensical to invest in brand building over and over again. RAZR was a brilliant success. But the brand and the buzz didn't last longer than 2 years. In other words, RAZR was and is not an iPod.
>Samba
first,hee hee thanx..
second,there is a possibility of a high end phone viz stylish and has all feats u cud ever want but that wud cost too much.besides some of these feats hav additional costs like download costs on the phones..so if u r buyin a blackberry u shud b sure u r ready to pay hutch or airtel for popping mails and other doanloads.
third, im not so sure bout the copying thing bcos ive found two models of nokia that r the copy of a samsung phone and a sony ericsson phone, and they r doing pretty well in sales.
fourth,advertising helps a lot, but an informed consumer always does a lot of research before buying anyhthing...so while advertising brings awareness wat brings sales wud b brand loyalty,equity and value for money.
fifth i agree with u..the r too many low end phones flooding the markets that it pulls down profits.
sixth,those brands r absent i think of others factors too.
seven,i pod is diff from a razr bcos of monopoly and innovation.while razr has one USP that keeps it diff from other phones (and now a days its not an imp USP too...cos phones wit feats r more imp than the USP of the phone-its size) i think i pod had a bunch of feats that makes it most favoured.here i mus mention apple is like the king among fools wher the compeition was never as great a name as apple while motorola really does not hav a too many brand followers.
Btw ming does not have EDGE :)
(whole lot of reading huh!)
Features, performance and quality matter, obviously. But all else equal, advertising is what decides the first among equals. And since high end cellphones are aspirational products, viral marketing works too, especially in the young demographic. But again, what drives the word of mouth is again, features, looks and YES ADVERTISING. I firmly believe that at times, viral marketing can be induced. For instance, Jaguar tried something to the effect of live product placements a few months ago in the US. It gave away cars to a few rich party animals to show off. (ofcourse without revealing it came free!)
I agree with your explanation of the iPod's success. It had the advantage (or is it?) of selling a product whose penetration at the time was low. But that also meant, Apple had to grow the mrket almost single handedly. Not every company has this luxury. Nonetheless, that's not good reason to build short-lived brands. I would still want everlasting brands (or at least long lasting brands) in my portfolio. I would invest in R&D and keep building phones with better features and performance. Nonetheless, I wouldn't let go of the fans I have acquired with one successful brand. I would look at transforming that brand into something of a Black Label or Marlboro - something that commands brand loyalty - something that retains its intangibles regardless of change in looks, technology and features.
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