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Lifestyle device design
The growing number of lifestyle devices (and MVNOs) have had at best unpredictable success. Why?
Let's define a lifestyle device as a personal communications device that caters to a specific market segment with specific interests. A personal communications device (PCD) is a wireless handheld device with a primary focus on communications, with text, voice, or both. Examples include the BlackBerry, OGO, Treo, and all variety of mobile phones.
What does the ideal lifestyle device look like? First and foremost, it must bow to the requirements dictated by The Carry Principle:- While some people may want a separate device for a specialized experience for something, like video or music or a camera, many others will want the functionality but not enough to carry a separate device. So they'll want it in the device that they do carry: the personal communications device. As a result, personal communications devices will inherently be multi-purpose.
- Anything that is always carried will be part of your look, your style. Devices will be selected with style in mind. This explains the RAZR and a plethora of devices within the Japanese and Korean markets.
- Because it is a personal device, users will want to have it personalized, as seen with the array of ringtones, wallpapers, and themes available.
So a lifestyle device should be targeted at a lifestyle that is unlikely to purchase a separate device just for the "lifestyle". The NGage was targeted at just the audience who would normally want a separate device for the fully immersed, optimized (gaming) experience. Well, those people use GameBoys or PSPs. It wasn't a great phone and didn't serve the other needs well.
ESPN's sports device is too expensive and TOO focused on sports: most people have interests outside of sports. The device has to remain a general purpose device, or users are forced to use other devices for general purpose things.
"Sports" is too broad a concept. Participant? Live fan? Television fan? The three have wildly different needs, with the live action fan being the most expensive to support. Carriers definitely need to be involved for them, and once that happens you wouldn't want to restrict premium services to just folks with the special phone. Television fans
can be supported with content distribution, alerts, text messaging, and so forth.
So what would work?
How about blogging-focused PCD? You are unlikely to purchase a separate handheld device just to blog. But a PCD with a good keyboard (either QWERTY or Fastap), a good post-writing user interface, built-in connections with common blogging sites and mechanisms, and a superb RSS reader with content on the standby screen? That makes a voice call when you start dialing numbers? And has a camera that can also post to Flickr, personal servers, and blogging sites/applications? That can perhaps record well enough to podcast from the phone? Ah ha.
A diabetic-focused PCD will help the diabetic monitor blood sugar, record relevant food and activity, and coach the user; it can also perform the more common actions of taking pictures, downloading content, etc. Just because a person is diabetic does not mean the person doesn't like sports or music or chatting.
A lifestyle device needs to be a full PCD optimized for specific market segment needs, but retaining the ability to do general purpose PCD functions (however that evolves over the years). It will not replace a separate device for devotees of the experience, as the N-Gage illustrated, camera phones have illustrated, and music phones are likely to illustrate.
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