Niche Form Factors Can't Guarantee Even Niche Success

Author: Kevin Burden, Vice President and Practice Director, Mobile Devices

Published: 17 Aug 2009

There are some form factors that stretch the concept of a mobile phone too far to make even a dent in a niche market, such as Nokia’s 7280 lipstick phone. Then there are those models that stretch the phone into a form of ideal convenience that does succeed in making a sizeable dent in the niche market, but then cannot break free of its niche status because it looks and feels too different from what we are used to. Such is likely to be the case with Samsung’s recently unveiled S9110— what it calls the thinnest watch phone to the hit the market—a claim far easier to make due to the limited market than to the engineering feat required to produce it. The claim is squarely aimed at LG, the company that Samsung takes more pride in thumping than any of its other competitors, which announced its own watch phone called the GD910 back in January 2009.

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