SEX seemed to be on the minds of thousands of dark-suited men on the seafront at Cannes yesterday. But there was not a starlet in sight and the attraction was not the gaggle of semi-naked corporate hostesses. The testosterone was being stirred by mobile telephones.
The scene was Day 2 of the 3GSM Congress, the global High Mass of the world’s fastest-growing industry.
With its acronyms and glitzy gadgets, the congress — attended by 35,000 people, mostly male — is techie heaven. But two decades on from the brick-like portables, the talk is no longer about wowing the customer with gizmos and ultimate “mobile devices”, but simply whetting their desire.
“We have to seduce. We must attract the customer with the beauty of our phone,” said Arnaud Amouyal of Samsung, showing off the sensuous curves of the latest model.
The South Korean company says that it is “designing for the soul”, making “the phone that you want to hold in your hand”.
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Across at Panasonic they were touting the “cutting edge cool” of their latest X200 mini phone, a 68gram matchbox-size wonder that underlined the old adage that mobiles are the only thing that men compete to have the smallest. “No it doesn’t do videos, but people don’t really want that,” the Panasonic woman said.
The point was echoed by phone makers and service providers. Three years after Europe’s phone companies paid £60 billion for third-generation licences, the technology has so far failed to take flight.
Business types may be in love with their BlackBerries and PDAs, but the public is not.
As the Electronic Engineering Times noted, no one really wants a Dick Tracy-style wrist communicator that does everything — even though the old science fiction fantasy is now a potential reality.
The claim to technical ease looked shaky among the corporate tents and hospitality yachts in Cannes, as many of the world’s connected people struggled to get online or synchronise their PDAs at the Wi-Fi cafés.
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“Can’t hear you. The connection’s crap,” a London executive moaned into his Bluetooth headset at a company that boasted that it was “shattering the usability barrier”.
A shaky connection was also spoiling the fun up at the Content Zone, where a naked woman was supposed to have been writhing on the phone screen at Sex.Navigator, a Spanish company that supplies porn pictures and video services in Spain, Belgium and Switzerland.
“Normally you see the action but the network is not working,” an official apologised.
For the ordinary customer the future, according to the mobile gurus, is no longer about smart phones and pushing technology. It is about getting away from gadgetry and on to simplicity with a few basic functions that people want — or rather, lust for.
No one has made such a blatant grab for this as Emblaze Mobile, an Israel-based company that has hired as its global chief executive Laurence Alexander, a top officer with the British company O2.
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The company’s new mobile models, on sale shortly in Britain, are named Desire, Excite and Envy.
The telephone will play MP3 music as well as communicate. The Envy includes a digital camera.
“It is all about lifestyle,” Mr Alexander said. “We want to take things back to basics. Customers want a simple telephone that plays music and games, sends messages and takes pictures.