Scott Kirsner of FastCompany says what a lot of people are probably feeling and what execs at Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Samsung really don’t want to hear: that he doesn’t need a fancy new cellphone and that he’s perfectly happy with the handset he has now:
Want to tick off the CEO of Nokia? Tell him how much you love your no-frills, bottom-of-the-line cell phone. Last year, when I ran into Jorma Ollila, chief executive of the world’s largest cell-phone maker, I did just that. I owned a basic, battered Nokia 6160 that worked like a charm. Like the original Model T, it was black — and reliable as heck. I told Ollila that I planned to own that phone until it either croaked or was accidentally left on the train. The Finnish chairman and CEO looked at me as if I had just smacked him with a wet herring. At a conference, he’d just finished touting the wonders of Nokia’s high-end wireless handsets, such as the Communicator. Ollila hopes that by continually adding new features, he can boost the average price (and profits) of his phones and prompt consumers to trade in their old handsets more often.
We can certainly sympathize with Scott’s sentiment. We actually own several different phones but can’t quite bring ourselves to abandon the small, reliable phone we have now (nor can we face the prospect of having to reprogram all our contacts into another phone). That said, the new Treo 600 is proving to be a massive temptation.
