Mannerisms

These guys are not, as I had once supposed, saddos with nothing better to do. They’re trying to wrap their brains around how the various functions on complex phones can be made to work.

Now STMicro's CEO, Carlo Bozotti and TI's CFO Kevin March, are saying that, to everyone's surprise, the market has recently turned away from the high-end, complex phones to the simple talk/listen/text/camera type of phone.

Bozotti and March are unhappy about that becasue they can get more money for high-end silicon than for the low-end silicon, and they both reported lower operating margins for the fourth quarter because of the higher demand for low-end silicon.

Following my recent, Sauvignon-induced, attempt to go swimming with my cellphone in my trunks' pocket, I now have a relatively high-end phone. It comes with a 90 page user’s guide, plus a 167 page downloadable guide for using it in conjunction with a laptop.

Sometimes, while going through these tomes, something works and I enable a feature. Nine times out of ten my attempts fail.

I have yet to get it to pair with my laptop via Bluetooth. I have yet to get it to log onto the Internet. I have yet to get it to access the office Intranet or send an email. And not for want of trying.

It occurred to me this week that my experience is part of the same problem which Bozotti and March face. If people find these high-end phones so tricky to use, they'll buy simple ones they can use.

Maybe that's what's already happening. March and Bozotti admitted to not knowing whether the trend to low-end was a glitch or a permanent feature of the market.

March thought that maybe new applications were the answer to reversing the trend, and getting people back to buying high-end phones.

But it could simply be that more understandable manuals, and phones which are more intuitive to use, are what's necessary to get people back on the upgrade path to the high-end.

No one enjoys the hours of frustration trying to understand how to work a new phone.