About a year ago I was offered a free upgrade to replace my mobile phone handset. The upgrade was free because I've been a customer with the phone company for so long, but I declined the offer because at the time there were only three phones that actually met my requirements for Bluetooth and tri-band. I was already using the best of these, so the upgrade seemed pointless. By the way, I like having a Bluetooth phone because it means I can use a cordless headset, and the tri-band option saves the boss a small fortune whenever I travel abroad on business.
Well, a year later and my mobile phone finally stopped working. A quick peep into the local phone shop was enough to see that there are now more than three Bluetooth phones on the market. At last, I can upgrade my phone to something that is more useful.
For example, I would like to carry a portable audio recorder so that I can record comments at meetings without conspicuously clacking away on a keyboard.
Shortly after not upgrading last year, I came across a phone that could record about 90 minutes of audio. It seemed like the kind of phone for me. Unfortunately, that model has been replaced by one that can only record for about three minutes. The rest of its memory is now dedicated to photo-messaging. Clearly I'm about as likely to use photo-messaging as I am to prevent the fall of the Roman Empire, but obviously the phone companies see more potential profit from photo messaging than they do from letting me record my meetings.
Well, it's a dangerous thing for a business to put its own interests higher than those of its customers. In fact I can think of only a few examples where this happens.
British Telecom is a good example. Here is a firm that has a good reason for alienating its customers, and seems to have perfected the art of doing so. Years ago BT saw that there was no future in its analogue phone business. Hence, in order to survive, it needed to branch out into new markets. Eventually these branches became so long and tangled that its old products and customers became almost irrelevant.
Ironically, the same is true in the mobile phone marketplace. Business users were vital to seed the market, but now the name of the game is volume, which in this case means phones that appeal to consumers. If you are a business user, you have to spend a small fortune for a suitable handset, or put up with one that doesn't pass muster. It seems to me that one or two IT vendors are in a similar position, of dumping old technologies in favour of new markets.
Perhaps they should take a look at BT and the mobile phone operators - while they still can.
reader comments