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Smartphones try fashion make-overs in an effort |to boost sales [Star, The (South Africa)](Star, The (South Africa) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) SAN FRANCISCO: Bright colours, funky textures and personalisation are coming to a smartphone near you as mobile phone-makers turn to fashion to buoy sales in a crowded market. Apple Inc and Google Inc's Motorola are among those trying to score style points as game-changing technological innovation becomes harder to achieve in the maturing business. Since the first touch-screen iPhone hit the market in 2007, software features have become easier to replicate, and improvements in speed, weight, display size and resolution have become routine. The explosion of me-too products is already hurting profit margins and nibbling at Apple and Samsung Electronic Co Ltd's market share. Time to bring out the paintbrush. Apple has invited reporters to an event on Tuesday where it is expected to introduce new iPhones in a much broader palette of colours, perhaps even gold. One-time leader Motorola, now owned by Google, is trying to win back consumers with the Moto X, relying partly on customised colours and, soon to come, engravings and unusual casing materials such as wood. Robert Brunner, founder of design consultancy Ammunition and a former Apple industrial design chief, said personalisation was a well-worn tactic employed when a product's uniqueness fades. "As something becomes embedded in lifestyle and as it starts to become commoditised, people look towards more superficial design things to differentiate or at least reach more people," said Brunner, whose clients have included Amazon.com, Dell and Nike. "And colours are the classic. If you do it at the right time, it will create an increase in sales every time." Much of the speculation around new iPhones this year has focused on colours and material, in marked contrast to previous years when hopes ran high for a breakthrough feature. The consumer electronics industry lives and dies by innovation, and resorting to aesthetics is at best a stop-gap measure until frequently talked-about new technology, such as fingerprint identification, holographics or flexible displays become reality. Smartphone shipments grew 52 percent in the second quarter, according to research firm IDC. But the market is getting crowded, with everyone from Alcatel Lucent to China's Huawei producing an abundance of look-alike phones based on Google's Android software. Consumers face a sea of "rectangles that are black and white" that all use similar software and capabilities, said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with research firm Gartner. "So you need that instant hook in the store to get people to pay attention, and that comes from the fashion and style." Making more stylish phones, however, can increase production costs and make inventory management and demand forecasting more challenging. Also, taste varies from region to region. So success in the fashion game requires mastering new supply chain and manufacturing skills. But while fashion can provide a nice way for phone-makers to buoy sales for now, smartphone companies ultimately need unique technology to maintain a long-term advantage. "The way we think about technology companies is in terms of sustainable competitive advantages, or economic moats," said Wahlstrom. "It's not sustainable unless you have the intellectual property or patent support behind it that really creates a barrier to entry." - Reuters The Star (c) 2013 Independent Newspapers (Pty) Limited. All rights strictly reserved. Provided by Syndigate.info an Albawaba.com company |