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September 23, 2007
The litmus test: Will the litmus paper turn Orange ..
We are all familiar with the Litmus test – where the Litmus paper turns Red or Blue depending on the acidic / alkaline nature of the chemical.
As an industry, we are facing our own acid test …
Orange has excluded both Nokia and Motorola from it’s list of Christmas handsets. As I said in the chicken or the egg blog, customers always choose a device first ..
And hence the litmus test. Will they choose ‘Orange’ over the devices (which Orange has now excluded)
Here is a clue .. Dean Bubley laments Orange’s user interface on Sony Ericsson devices - and he is a SE fan!
Either way - it's a horrible user experience and reflects negatively on both operator and handset vendor. Will it increase his spending on new & wonderful multimedia services or improve loyalty? Yeah right.
Perhaps phones are like cars.... the people who design them best are the original designers, especially non-smart featurephones. I don't add on nasty bits of plastic from Halfords to modify my car, and I don't want nasty bits of software modifying my phone.
If an industry veteran like Dean cannot work it out .. I think Orange has a problem ..
The real issue is: This is not the time to play games .. Customers are going to compare the poor interface with the iPhone .. And guess who will win?
I am watching this with interest!
Orange is getting some things right(especially Martin Duvall's team - more on that soon) - but this is not one of them!
Posted by ajit at September 23, 2007 10:49 PM
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