Blue Phones: Blue Ocean Strategy & Mobile Phones

The best reception I've received on my phone, a late-model Blackberry, was in Hyderabad, India. The worst, by far, is in my home office in suburban Florida. While my reception at home is especially awful it isn't much better as I drive around. Even on the one freeway that runs through the area, connecting Miami to the rest of the world, during weekdays and weekends, reception ranges from spotty to awful.

Despite it's failure to hold a call AT&T, my provider, seems happy to keep cranking phones with sophisticated gadgetry. Apparently AT&T pays a steep premium for the privilege of sending out phones larded with features that barely work. Somebody may demand this, but I'm not sure who they are. I have a close friend who runs a real-estate brokerage firm and he likes the ability to take and transmit photos. But he's the only person over 20 who I've actually seen consistently use this feature.

Life's tough for phone makers right now, except for Apple. Here's a suggestion: create a Blue Phone.

My suggestion:

Eliminate cameras and multi-media. I've yet to meet somebody who demands their phone takes pictures or really wants to watch TV on their phone. For those that do, there are plenty of great tiny digital cameras and portable DVD players are cheap.

Reduce other non communication-based "features." I was trying to use the mapping feature on my phone the other day: even with the Blackberry's relatively bright and large screen it's just too small to be useful. I wouldn't get rid of all these "features" entirely but if it isn't used for communication, the makers of these phones should think about saving the cost.

Raise reliability (no-drop) and ease of use. Phone makers should be able to do this with the technology, power, and cost savings they capture from the eliminate and reduce parts of the Four Actions Framework. Focus on making a phone that doesn't drop calls and that has adequate volume: make this a central priority. Make email integration intuitive to set-up, and SMS's easy to read and retrieve.

Create non dysfunctional customer service. Right now, a stop into the AT&T store is like an excursion to Dante's seventh rung of hell. The only positive experience I've ever had was when an elderly Haitian man, waiting patiently, gave me a lecture about always finding the good even in the worst situations. It was a spiritual Zen-like moment, but somehow I don't think AT&T had anything to do with it (other than creating an environment awful enough to inspire a Yoda-like lecture). While the advice was temporarily uplifting, AT&T still screwed up my order when my number was finally called. I dread dealing with the company, and while I pick on AT&T, because they're my own carrier, none of the others seem better.

In short, give us what we want: phones that have clear call clarity, that don't drop calls, that have reasonably easy to use SMS and email, and not really anything else. Then let us buy the phones in a calm atmosphere staffed by competent and friendly people.

End note: John Doerr, of Kleiner-Perkins fame and fortune (especially fortune), announced while I was writing this that KP is setting up a $100MM iPhone applications fund. Great. I love the iPhone: my wife has one. And Doerr/KP had the good sense to put $100MM into Google in the early days of the dot-com bust, then to announce later that they wouldn't liquidate their shares for $85 at the IPO. They're consistently brilliant. So maybe I'm being short-sighted and there really is a need for all sorts of applications on the iPhone; I just hope one of them is ITV: "Increase The Volume."