Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On , a column about consumer technology.
Motorola’s Droid RAZR takes enough pages out of the classic textbook of smartphone differentiation to gather its own chapter. It sets a brand new standard for thinness in LTE devices, uses leading-edge display technology, resists flexing, glass breakage and water damage, has a striking design and thoughtfully selected materials, stretches battery life, matches with a bevy of optimized accessories, and enables remote file and media access via Motocast software . Who’s it for? Nearly any Verizon customer willing to pony up.
Its rival HTC has also long played the single-upsmanship game. It has invested in a software layer designed to have populist appeal. Moreover, it has catered to US carriers’ priorities by being first out of the gate to support T-Mobile’s 3G network (with the primary Android phone, the G1 ) and Sprint’s and Verizon’s 4G efforts, in addition to one among two to initially support AT&T’s LTE network.
And the work has paid off. At its recent introduction of the Rezound , the corporate crowed that it were named the best-selling smartphone brand within the US in Q3 and that it was the leader in 4G smartphones. (The NPD Group, my employer, supports the second one claim but not the primary.) HTC also noted that it had cracked the Interbrand 100 list of best global brands after only five years of name promotion. The company’s “partner” Beats Audio, wherein the handset maker has invested hundreds of millions of greenbacks, also drenched its benefactor in praise. This was followed by expected statements of support from Verizon and Best Buy, as a way to sell the Rezound.
HTC may thus be losing the battle to be “quietly brilliant.” However, one aspect of its campaign on which it sort of feels to be overdelivering on is the point of interest on “you,” a word that merited its own slide early within the Rezound’s unveiling. Unlike the tour de force of the Droid RAZR, the Rezound is the second one recent HTC smartphone to have a loosely defined yet thoughtfully targeted user or specialty. Whereas the plum-coated HTC Rhyme was aimed at fashion-forward consumers searching for a life-style-management handset, the Rezound — with its Beats Audio tuning, bundled Beats headphones and high-definition display — is that specialize in a multimedia entertainment experience, one clearly anchored in music.
In many ways, this approach recalls the heyday of feature phones, ironic on account that HTC has the least history in those devices among major smartphone OS licensees. By contrast, Sony Ericsson, for instance, long emphasized “imaging phones” borrowing the Cyber-shot brand and “music phones” with the Walkman label. Smartphones raised the bar for these and lots of more tasks, apparently rendering such focus irrelevant since apps can make any smartphone capable jacks-of-many-trades.
But like every retro phenomena, the nod to the past doesn’t exactly recapture it. HTC’s approach seriously is not as strictly defined by features. Even the music-centric Rezound has continued an emphasis on higher-quality imaging features recently extolled by Apple and Nokia. The targeted smartphone is more about persuasion than purpose, with HTC’s crafted customers a hybrid of specific demographics, behaviors and personality.
HTC’s tailoring will not be noticed or appreciated by its intended audience and, finally, two phones don’t a method make. Yet, as smartphone saturation continues to grow within the US and app libraries clear a baseline of selection and quality, a lot of these devices became rungs of specifications in manufacturers’ chosen ladders of operating systems. In an age when more people than ever can afford a smartphone, new opportunities may lie in recognizing that it’s now not with regards to how much smartphone you may afford.
Ross Rubin ( @rossrubin ) is executive director and principal analyst of the NPD Connected Intelligence service at The NPD Group . Views expressed in Switched On are his own.
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