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	Who Benefits from Multicolored Handsets

Last update: 11-13-2007	Submitted by Alan Grassia



Who Benefits from Multicolored Handsets I have been thinking about mobile devices coming in all sorts of cute fruity flavors. Who really stands to benefit from these choices: the wireless carriers or the customers? I recently wrote about two rumors on FoleoFanatics.com both having to do with Palm offering smartphones in different colors. The rumors got me thinking about why Palm offers smartphones in different colors in the first place. Back in the Handspring days, the Visor Deluxe line came in an assortment of colors: blue, red, orange, green, white, and graphite. Since then, there have been a few color options for special edition handhelds. The teal green Palm Vx comes to mind as does the blueberry and cranberry colored m505s. When dealing with handhelds, it was Palm (or Handspring) offering the customer a choice of colors. Now that smartphones are out selling handhelds, the sales paradigm has shifted. In the smartphone market, the wireless companies are the gatekeepers to the cellular networks, and as such, Palm’s customer has changed from the end user to the phone companies. This change has shifted the device color selection for the most part, away from the consumer and over to the wireless carriers. It is the carriers who now have the choice of color selection for the smartphones they chose to carry. When the Treo first appeared color selection wasn’t a big deal because there was only one color. The Treo 180, 270, 300, 600, and 650 all came in some variation of graphite. The Treo 700p and 750 came in a charcoal grey. The muted colors made sense because all of these devices were all targeted at business customers. Flashy phones don’t necessarily go over well in the boardroom. By the time the Treo 500v, 680, 755p, and Cento arrived in the marketplace something had changed. Palm and their mobile partners began to market to the consumer. Offering phones in more than one color allows consumers to pick a phone that best suits their personality. So does it make sense for the carriers to be calling the shots on color selection on behalf of the consumer? Let’s look at the Treo 755p. At the time of writing, only two carriers in the United States have the Treo 755p available for sale: Sprint and Alltel. Sprint offers the 755p in two colors: blue and burgundy. Alltel only offers the 755p in one color, black. For the sake of argument, let’s say my favorite color is blue and that I’d like to have the blue Treo 755p. And let’s also assume that I am an Alltel customer. Even though there is a blue 755p, I can’t use it because the blue 755p is exclusive to Sprint. Is it really fair to the consumer to have to switch carriers to get a Treo in the desired color? There may also be an early termination fee to get out of the current contract. So what is the motivation for exclusive colored phones? Does Palm charge the carriers a fee to lock in exclusive colors? Why aren’t more carriers offering a wider selection of colors like AT&T does with the Treo 680? At the end of the day, are colors just gimmicks to get people to sign up with a specific carrier, or are the colors provided to give wireless customers more choices? What do you think about smartphones being offered in all the colors of the rainbow? Let us know in the 1SRC forums.