Motorola Signs Ferrari Designers to Help with Mobile Phone Designs

[Mike Temporale]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2006/02/28/motorola-signs-ferrari-designer-pininfarina-for-new-phones/' target='_blank'>http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2006/02/28/motorola-signs-ferrari-designer-pininfarina-for-new-phones/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Italy's Pininfarina, designers of Ferrari cars and the "sexy-but-kind-of-heavy" Olympic torch for the Torino games, have added Motorola to their list of clients. They've signed on for three years and will be producing dozens of phones for Moto, with 10 designers assigned to the project. Motorola is, of course, trying to duplicate the success of the RAZR, but we're just looking forward to a few sexy-but-hopefully-not-so-heavy handsets."</i><br /><br />This is pretty interesting news. It shows that the mobile market is really heading towards style and fashion. The inner workings of the phone are not as important as how it looks. The RAZR is a prime example of this. It's a great looking phone, but functionally, it's nothing more than your average feature phone. I'm interested in seeing the results of this 3 year agreement. I hope this means we can see some attractive Windows Mobile Smartphones from Moto in the coming years. :)

[Jerry Raia]

I hope this means we can see some attractive Windows Mobile Smartphones from Moto in the coming years. :)

I suspect what we will be seeing is Motorola moving towards not having anything inside the phone. Just colorful empty handsets like the demo's you see in stores. That way they can really focus on style and not worry about those pesky electronic thingies that would have gone inside.

[Janak Parekh]

Before you get excited, Mike, Phone Scoop says this is only for iDEN phones (http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=1617).

--janak

[Mike Temporale]

Before you get excited, Mike, Phone Scoop says this is only for iDEN phones (http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=1617).

There's no mention of iDEN in the Reuters (http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticleSearch.aspx?storyID=237680+27-Feb-2006+RTRS&amp;srch=pininfarina) article (their source). It also states that they will be doing 2 phones a month. That's a lot of phone designs for just the iDEN network.

Besides, there are WinMo Smartphones in the iDEN arena anyway. So it's all good. ;)

[Kris Kumar]

I guess Motorola is getting OD'ed on style over substance.

[Janak Parekh]

There's no mention of iDEN in the Reuters (http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticleSearch.aspx?storyID=237680+27-Feb-2006+RTRS&amp;srch=pininfarina) article (their source). It also states that they will be doing 2 phones a month. That's a lot of phone designs for just the iDEN network.
Yeah, I saw that discrepancy. I historically trust Rich Brome over Reuters, but we'll find out soon enough. :)

--janak

[Mark Larson]

This is pretty interesting news. It shows that the mobile market is really heading towards style and fashion. The inner workings of the phone are not as important as how it looks. The RAZR is a prime example of this. It's a great looking phone, but functionally, it's nothing more than your average feature phone. Phones today have a lot more features than your average semi-literate users can use. How many use all the features on their non-Smartphone? I know I don't.

It may cost money (high speed WAP/WWW) or cost money and be kinda dumb (downloading music to your phone via EV-DO when you can get the music cheaper and more versatile on your PC) or be plain useless (Outlook syncing for Joe working at the factory). The RAZR has mp3 ringtones, but do you really want to pay $2.99 for one? (if you're semi literate you're not going to download Audacity).

So in essence, we're stagnating on features mainly because they cost too much to use, and moving towards looks and size as an emphasis. I couldn't be happier. :)

[Mike Temporale]

Yeah, I saw that discrepancy. I historically trust Rich Brome over Reuters, but we'll find out soon enough. :)

--janak

No question, Rich knows his stuff. ;) I'm just saying... :lol: