If you spend any time speaking with national carriers or multinational device vendors, you know that they exist only to meet consumer demand. It’s all about the consumer, etc.
A plausible and ubiquitous talking point, to be sure. Of course, how the carrier and device vendor – a marriage, sometimes temporary, of mutual interests and strategies – go about meeting consumer demand goes straight to the heart of those corporations’ strategic secret sauce. Thus, enquiries typically have polite limits.
But the contours of how those marriages of mutual interest are maintained can be glimpsed by looking at how a popular handset – in this case, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.’s BlackJack smartphone at AT&T Mobility and its successor, the BlackJack II – is refreshed to maintain the relationship, keep pace with the handset market and, of course, meet consumer demand.
(Anyone who has entered a carrier’s retail store most often sees more dazed and confused expressions than clear-cut “demand,” but hey, let’s give these companies the benefit of the doubt.)
Samsung launched the original BlackJack at AT&T Mobility’s predecessor entity, Cingular Wireless, in the last quarter of 2006 at a time when Motorola Inc. had launched its affordable smartphone, the Q, Nokia Corp. floated the E62 and Research In Motion, Ltd. produced the BlackBerry Pearl – all bringing fresh attention to the so-called prosumer demographic and the enviable margins up for grabs.
The BlackJack proved popular, though it provoked the ire of RIM, which charged that the name violated its trademarked BlackBerry’s identity – a dispute rapidly settled out-ofcourt.
Fast forward to a year later, this past fourth quarter, when after 12 to 18 months of wrestling for the relatively new and lucrative prosumer dollar, these vendors had all stepped up their efforts to keep pace with the market’s insatiable demand for slimmer, lighter, faster, more fully featured devices. Displays had gotten larger (the iPhone had launched), chips were faster-better-cheaper, software had been updated and that blessed consumer had gotten more savvy, using online research more adroitly to arrive at carrier stores a bit less dazed-and-confused.
In just 12 months, Samsung had made stunning upgrades to its BlackJack model and went with the movie-sequel thinking that places a premium on familiarity, with a dash of marketing: the BlackJack II was born.
‘Massive upgrades’
AT&T Mobility saw demand continue for the original device and kept it in its portfolio, dropping the price to give consumers a choice of the now-eminently affordable original at about $75 (it dropped to $50 this past holiday season), while the II sailed through the holidays at $150 (now dropped to $100). Consumers embraced the II, easing any fears that the older, cheaper model would cannibalize the newcomer’s sales.
Many consumers who bought the original BlackJack sought to migrate from Windows Mobile 5 to the newly available Windows Mobile 6 on the II, according to Muzib Khan, a Samsung vice president for product management and engineering. But those consumers also knew that Samsung had made massive upgrades to most other aspects of the device’s myriad features, he said.
To keep up with market pressures and competitive plays by other vendors, Samsung had delivered a faster application processor, HSDPA speeds to take advantage of AT&T Mobility’s network upgrades, assisted-GPS to deliver the carrier’s TeleNav service and added a 2100 MHz band for roaming in Europe and Japan (critical to international road warriors). Power management functionality had improved and the battery shrank while delivering longer life to accommodate a sleeker form factor. The display grew. Internal memory doubled. Camera resolution improved to 2 megapixels, with zoom, from the original’s 1.3 megapixels.
The II supported location-based services and AT&T Mobility’s mobile music over-the-air downloads. A jog wheel was added for intuitive navigation of features. Colors, materials and finishes were tweaked – black and burgundy models addressed consumer preferences and a soft-touch back added class. Meanwhile, the handset platform that delivered the II could be tweaked for other carrier customers overseas in a differentiated form.
Selling both devices
“If the market can sustain interest in a device in its original and refreshed form, we’ll carry both,” said Ravi Acharya, a senior marketing manager for Windows Mobile products at AT&T Mobility. “Especially in our group, we really gauge consumer demand. This device is a perfect fit for the prosumer and the international business person. The BlackJack II is one of those devices that merge the interests of both groups. That’s the very definition of a growth area.”
“We tell our competition we did this all in one day,” Khan joked, but added that the II’s development cycle was, indeed, longer than most handsets. “Complicated devices do take a little longer and there’s a testing cycle we must meet.”
If all this sounds like an advertisement for Samsung, so be it – the vendor is now the No. 2 in the world and has largely shed its “fast follower” reputation, particularly in the United States.
But this portrait also illustrates the myriad pressures and developments that converge in a refreshed product, which must reach the market in increasingly shortened time frames – an enormous task replicated by other vendors and carriers in the current, pressure-cooker environment that is the cellular handset industry.
