You are herewith cast as a consumer who must pick a safe way through an opening barrage of extreme marketing that pits Apple head-to-head with Nokia. Each corporation is vying to be the one to finally flood the U.S. market with high tech cell phones. For years, U.S. mobile users have been stuck with phones that do little more than send and receive phone calls--unlike their counterparts in Estonia who have enjoyed, since the early 2000s, the ability to feed parking meters by sending a text message from their mobiles, or like their friends in Finland who have enjoyed 3G mobile technology since 1999 (boosting speed and enabling multimedia services)--something the iPhone still couldn't access in the U.S. at the time of its release.
Imagine that you entered a media design contest and you just won your choice of either an Apple iPhone or Nokia N95. As a media studies traceur/esse, you leap into the marketing barrage. You attempt to navigate your way to the checkout counter--faced at every turn with decisions that go beyond the question of which device is a better "tool." Because this high end phone hype is about more than the device that meets the eye. It's about catching you up with your friends in around the world. As Michael Mace observed, "In the U.S. a cell phone is a tool. In Europe, a mobile phone is a lifestye."
Hype & Positioning
Apple's extreme marketing:
Steve on Stage: Mr. Job’s keynote address can now seen as the opening bell..
Experience Apple's step-by-step guided tour. It's got a refined, low-key feel ... that Bauhaus, minimalist design style is well complemented by a nice looking guy in a black long sleeved T-shirt., not unlike Steve Jobs.
Nokia’s extreme marketing:
credit: nokia
This video montage demos the iPhone rival, the N95, without use of any spoken words. It's fluid and fast moving and very cool. Note the tag line: “It’s what computers have become.”
Selling the future. Here are four short videos that forecast how mobiles will change life in the short term of three or four years. Wait for the download. Kit considers these among the most beautifully designed pieces he's seen to date. They use Flash in a non-linear, dazzling way.
Embedded Journalists:
BBC stands back and provides some needed journalistic perspective. There is a clip of Steve Job’s product launch.
In the U.S., NPR files its report. Interesting written reportage plus, in the audio clip, tech gurus weight in, including NY Times David Pogue.
Ballistic Reports:
iPhone: Here are the technical specifications.
Here are the N95 tech specs.
Cruise this list of links for a tour of the media hype that signalled the June 29th iPhone release.
Wired's pre-launch
What might be behind the hype?
The masses
Waiting In the Line
WIRED's iPhone true cost
N95: Released well before the iPhone launched, the N95 was 2007 winner of the TIPA Award for Best Mobile Imaging Device in Europe. An 8 gig version is not yet available in the U.S.
The Ultimate Target:
The target, of course, is you. Not everybody, but precisely the kind of person you most certainly are: young; tech savvy; media hungry. And aspire to be: capable of affording an expensive mobile that can easily accrue high-end monthly charges.
Conduct an informal poll among your friends, classmates and family who are into mobiles. What are they looking for in a multimedia, networked mobile? Do they have a dream purchase already lined up? How long will they wait? What are the cost barriers they face?
Jared Braiterman (our Guest in the Social Networking + edge) has a blog that shows three short videos featuring comments about mobiles-as-life style by Chinese young people in Beijing.
AN INVENTOR WEIGHS IN
The guy who invented the first cellular phone is alive and living in the Bay Area. The history of technology is filled with inventors like Thomas Edison who had very little insight about how their inventions would be used or what impact they would have on the culture.
Philippe Kahn is 55 years old. Ten years ago he created the first wireless synchronization infrastructure at Starfish Software and, because of that, is described as the father of the cell phone. Look him up in Wikipedia.
In a voice that is soft and enthusiastic as he photo projects, hear Mr. Kahn speak on "Weekend America" about the daily influence of his invention--including how it has figured in events ranging from the execution of Saddam Hussein to the London bombings.