Dean Bubley: Fashion phones

Dean Bubley blogs at Disruptive Wireless about the subject of "Fashion Phones" Bubley notes:

Over the last 3 years, there have been various fairly poor attempts at bridging the divide between cellular communications and trendiness. Siemens' Xelibri range had innovative designs, but poor marketing and ill-conceived distribution via places like clothes shops. The diamond-encrusted and hideously-expensive Vertu range of re-badged Nokias seem crass rather than cool. Mildly Ferrari-ised and Aston Martin-ised handsets have failed to accelerate sales. And if rumours are to be believed, we may get some new entrants into the handset space - perhaps brands like Nike or Gucci.

Bubley then defines what fashion really means:

1. The prevailing style or custom, as in dress or behaviour.
2. Something, such as a garment, that is in the current mode.

He then points out that "the prevailing style of handset at the moment is "thin and/or pink". Those are fashions, not the fact that Prada, Marks & Spencer or Daewoo slaps their own brand and colour scheme on a random phone."

Bubley concludes:

I've got no idea exactly how the clothing industry "decides" what next year's fashion is going to be. I can't believe that they all independently start to make white / black / short / satin / military-style shirts and dresses - there must be some sort of cross-pollination of ideas to find a core theme. So how about it? If the whole industry decides to go with camouflage-coloured narrow-phones for 2007, maybe market growth & margin might continue to accelerate?