5th December 2011
Post
Small talk sometimes yields an insightful gem of an idea. Today I had one of those encounters where someone asked what I did for work. The best I could come up with that early in the morning was “I’m trying to build a new kind of cell phone.”
“Well, make it so I’m locked in a contract for two years” she said.
I must have looked confused so she went on. “It took me $500 to get out of my AT&T contract. We’re all on Verizon now, and we all want iPhones but I can’t see spending $30 each to add them to the plan (meaning the additional data charges).”
So here I was talking about a device (phone) and she sees it inseparable from the service. While I shouldn’t be surprised it does reinforce my current thinking that any new platform will have to bundled with an out of the box ready service (provisioned when the customer turns on the phone). If the platform can be delivered profitably without having to lock customers into a multi-year contract, so much the better.
