Search the site
What we do
Little Springs Design is a mobile product, research, design, and usability testing consultancy. We help wireless operators, associations, manufacturers, and application & website providers with product and UI design, patterns, training, research and strategy.
Contact us today.
Downloads
Sign up to get a free copy of our Mobile Widgets Whitepaper or almost-monthly newsletter. Or buy mobile Java or web design guidelines.
Recent blog entries
Blog topics
Blog archives
iPhone clone killer design
Yesterday, Gizmodo published a great comparison of four large touch screen communications devices, a.k.a. iPhone clones. While I’m not sure that “clone” is fair, certainly they are perceived that way by the customers and are being targeted at the same market. So they are perhaps intended to be iPhone “killers.” If they work. And it looks like the Instinct – which officially launches today on Sprint – does.
At Design For Mobile we will have Mike Lundy talking about getting Gizmodo’s winner, the Instinct, from concept to market. He’s Sprint’s UX lead for the Instinct, as well as many other Sprint phones.
As you might expect, with such complex products to manage, Mike’s been super-busy. He is relying on us to organize his talk for him, and we’re going to leave that to you instead. What would you like to see him talk about regarding product management, vendor relationships, product design, feature setting, or anything else about handset/carrier decision making?
Post your ideas in the comments, and we’ll gather them all up.
3 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Disregarding big differences — like one has a keyboard — how do you feel something like the Glyde ended up with such awful reviews, compared to the Instinct? Both are Samsungs, with broadly similar front-face industrial design, launched within a few months of each other (in the U.S. at least). Is this an example of how much influence an operator/carrier can bring to bear on core design elements?
Comment by Steven — June 20, 2008 @ 3:33 pm
I’d love to know two things: for a phone to truly be an “iPhone killer” would mean people would choose to buy it instead of the iPhone. Just guessing, but I don’t think people will do that - the more likely scenario is that users will take advantage of the imitator that their carriers provide, rather than switch to AT&T. So my first question is, is that what the marketing plans look like for these makers of imitation iPhones, or do they feel people will switch to use theirs instead? My second question is, why can’t anyone create an ORIGINAL touchscreen design, rather than mimic the iPhone design? I would think they would want to, from a competitive standpoint, rather than have brand-oriented user experience folks like myself negatively consider them to be imitators instead of originators. Just curious!
Comment by Kristi Colvin — June 24, 2008 @ 2:55 pm
I don’t think that any of these is an iPhone killer, though some of them will cut into iPhone sales. Not only what you mentioned - avoiding switching operators - but also many MP3 players have learned that if they mimic iPod, people will buy their devices. I’ve heard such folks literally refer to their Creative MP3 player as their iPod. So there is a market there. Further, they want to cut into sales for customers who don’t want or don’t understand the full ecosystem. And they at least thought that they’d have a lower price device, but that didn’t happen.
As far as an original touch screen design … I think that’s what Sprint and Samsung did with the Instinct! It isn’t actually the iPhone experience. But once one product successfully goes down a UI path, other products follow because that’s how things are done.
Whenever I work on a completely new concept, I always like to brainstorm concepts BEFORE doing any competitive analysis. When we had a project looking at a new browser design, we did this and came up with some useful usable concepts not already done, with a better product as a result.
Too often, competitive analysis is the starting point for designing products. I think that competitive analysis should be a starting point for identifying markets, not design. It tells you who you want to go after, what their expectations are, and where their unmet needs are. It tells you the problem. If you want your solution to be something beyond “me too”, you should not limit yourself too early by examining the competitors’ solution. But that’s what many companies do.
Comment by Barbara — June 25, 2008 @ 9:17 am