Allow me to rant a bit. I have two cell phones on two different carriers (don’t all the cool kids do this, these days) – AT&T and Verizon Wireless. I haven’t had a contract on AT&T in a few years. I haven’t needed it. I currently have a 3G N95 that I ordered online. Before that, I had a Nokia E61. Neither has been available on AT&T, but thanks to the wonders of quad-band GSM, I just drop my SIM card into a new phone and I’m up and running. As we all know, that’s not the case with Verizon. They require that you buy your phone through them and to get the best price, you must re-up your contract for two years for their admittedly good service. You want to get a phone from someplace else and use it on Verizon Wireless? Tough … (at least for now since they plan on opening their network a bit)
I don’t like my Verizon phone – a three month old HTC Touch (referred to by Verizon as the VX6900). I thought it was cool when I bought it, but its flaws have worn on me. I don’t care about it not having a keyboard, but at least the on-screen keyboard could be usable. Beyond that, I’m finding right now that it selectively rings. In other words, if it is in standby mode, it won’t ring when a call comes in, but will briefly ring once you turn the screen on to use the phone. Apparently, this might as well be a feature given the number of people for whom this is an issue. I say this to say that I’d like to change my phone and guess what, I can’t. It’s not because Verizon doesn’t have other phones for which I could pay full price. Instead, it’s because the only phones one can use on Verizon’s network, thanks to their closed-mindedness, are old ones. Go ahead. Go check out Verizon’s site and find a Windows Mobile (Professional, my preference) based phone that wasn’t announced at least a year ago. For those who are counting, that’s even pre-iPhone.
Here’s where this hits home for Verizon. Check out the Samsung Instinct. It’s an iPhone-like touch screen phone Sprint recently released and it’s selling so fast Sprint can hardly keep it in stock. Verizon has put out two phones, the LG Voyager and the Samsung Glyde, that they thought might be, if not iPhone killers, iPhone competitors. The public hasn’t thought so. What did Verizon do wrong? A couple of things…
For one, check out the different ways Sprint and Verizon market their phones. You can go to the Verizon website for the Glyde. Exciting, huh? That’s the first SERP listing on Google when you query “Verizon Glyde”. To their credit, they did hoodwink Samsung into building a Flash driven site. Not great, but better than what Verizon did themselves. Now, let’s head back to Sprint land. The Instinct’s site? Check it out. Sprint created a campaign around the launch of the Instinct. Talk about MarketnologySM at work! Not only did they create a campaign, but they’re even offering to pay consumers for doing Instinct product placement in home videos on YouTube. Amazing, stuff…
But, I said Verizon did a couple of things wrong… The second thing? It’s something they’ve been doing wrong. They’ve not been thinking about their audience. Every non smart phone you buy from Verizon has the same outdated, ugly and difficult to use interface. They changed it a bit for the Glyde’s outer screen, but by and large they insisted on putting their ugly mark on the phone. Understand that the Glyde and the Instinct, when they leave Samsung, are just about the same phone with the exception of the Glyde having hardware keyboard. What happened on the way to market was Verizon’s unwillingness to think about what they can do to make things easier for the audience rather than using a lowest-common-denominator interface that makes thing consistent for their tech support. I would posit that if the interface is easy to use, customers won’t have to call that much – which explains why Sprint went for easy since they’re tech support is rumored to suck.
Enough of my rant, my point is that Verizon has their heads up their behinds. In this market, being lazy won’t sell phones. There they are stuck in the middle of AT&T, who had the vision to take on Apple’s crazy iPhone deal, and Sprint who seems to have found the key to getting people interested in their products (though, they seem to be faster to market than Verizon anyway). To my mind, Verizon has to get over middle child syndrome look towards innovation as way out of their obvious doldrums.