Thin Is The New Flip
Samsung pretty much wore the silver flip phone design into the ground, and its next target is thin phones, after the success of the Motorola RAZR. The RAZR proved what having an iconic design can do for a product, but the challenge for Samsung will be to make its efforts look like something other than copycats. Samsung has for some time been saying its strategy is to sell high-end phones that can command premium prices, but this has been undermined somewhat by their phones’ designs. Part of the appeal of luxury goods for many people is that they show off their status to other people. It’s easy to pick out the RAZR; but Samsungs (at least those sold in the west) all pretty much look alike to the untrained eye. If thin phones are supposed to represent some sort of premium, won’t making them an aspect of an entire brand of phones simply make the characteristic a commodity?
