I had a group come by recently and pitch me that the Next Billion-Dollar Thing on cellphones is … clip art. Ringtones, they argued, were only one part of personalization, and a passe one at that. The next frontier, to their way of pitching, is personalized art on your phone.
While I told them that I think they’re probably wrong (people may customize phones with clip art, but a) it serves a different non-broadcast purpose, and b) they’re unlikely to pay for it), I’m happily proven wrong myself. So … I’m curious how many people have clip art (or photos, or whatever) as the desktop on their phone.
Just to get things started, I’ll stand up and testify that I have an admittedly scary Ralph Steadman drawing (from the excellent Criterion DVD of Withnail and I) as my Treo’s desktop.
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I spent hours creating a custom theme for my phone (everything from the desktop image to the menu hex colors), but as a designer that is rather normal. I imagine people would be interested in having personalized phone UIs if they were easy to buy and install, and of course good looking. I think the biggest hinderance to this becoming a viable business is the absolute lack of UI standards from phone to phone and carrier to carrier.
I have a clip art-ish image, but it came with the phone and I’ve never changed it. I also use the default ringtone fwiw, and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone over age 30 who makes an effort to personlize his cell phone.
Not that hard-pressed. I’m 31 and I downloaded a New England Patriots logo to be the background on my Blackberry (it took over for the Red Sox logo as of early October). I did, however, do this customization when I was a naive and immature 30.
ring tones, wallpapers, clip art, avatars, electronic characters and what ever else are a complete waste of time.
a “nice to have”, impulse driven, consumer purchase – at best.
I’ve never paid for this stuff and I don’t think i will.
But: even for a non-consumer like me, if the product was bundled in when I buy the gadget (say, an ipod or a mobile phone) then I wouldn’t mind including all these nice ad-ons with my purchase.
Don’t know why that happens, it just does.
I downloaded a free background from my provider. It’s a nice mountain scene, but makes my signal and battery bars impossible to see. Zap. The novelty has worn off.
Would pick a cool picture if it were a) easy to install and b) free. Pulling out the credit card even for just a $1 purchase for a cute picture to carry around on my phone is just a little too affected. But then again, I am a cheap midwesterner, so what do I know about killer fashion apps.
When I read the recent comments a few things stand out. (my hypothesis here-not trying to put words in anyone’s mouth. a)the quality of wallpaper was poor (usability issues etc.) b) there was nothing there that they liked enough to make a purchase and c)the cost may have been too high to begin with.
It all speaks to value proposition and to be honest it’s not surprising. Wallpapers and such have been low hanging, money-making, fruit for carriers, for years now. Most are quickly slapped together and rely on branded properties to generate value. (“my customers will want this wallpaper because it has Shrek, Harry Potter, or Manchester United on it. And if they don’t want that, then they’ll want a picture of a sports car or kitten-everyone loves those!”) And in part they’re right-yet it’s not that simple.
Phones are changing. Consumers can now easily put their own media on phones. Why pay for a download from a carrier? (with possible bandwidth chares to boot) I spent several months in Asia in the past year (not Japan, but diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-income countries where it’s harder to generalize) and yet almost everyone, who had a smartphone had something on it. Mostly it was pictures of family and friends (transferred via MMC card-no carrier in sight.) And that goes back to value and personalization. If quality images were available at a reasonable cost, allowing users to choose where and how they used them, possibly allowing users to participate in the creation process, and possibly allowing them to share them with friends (much of the stuff you download from carriers can’t be removed from the phone,) plus with visual styles, topics, and content that suit wider audiences…I think more people would personalize in this way.
As far as clip art… would subscribers take a monthly discount to carry around a logo for display? Product placement in a sense, or as a personal endorsement. Instead of paying for Tommy Hilfiger or the Rolling Stones’ mouth, an up-and-coming brand would pay customers to display clip art.
‘clip art’? You mean those cheesy graphics that Microsoft put out?
Or actual photos?
Our home network (6 Macs, 2 PCs, an airport (jellyfish), etc) is all named for sea critters (see http://www.mcgreer.ca/bill/Showcase/index.html for some of our obsession)…
The Motorola V620 looked a bit like a nudibranch (sea slug) so I named it accordingly & gave it this as a desktop photo.
http://www.mcgreer.ca/bill/Showcase/slides/Flabellina%20Nudibranch.html
(I don’t know why the big empty space at the top of the page – I’ll look into that)
But only because I could upload it myself (no small feat to interface a Moto with a Mac in a decent way). I can’t pay for personal customization… that’s just wrong..
I think people with cameraphones will just use photos they’ve snapped.
That’s what I’ve done – my phone’s wallpaper is a snapshot of 2 Liberty Place in Philadelphia, which I took while standing on Chestnut St.
There’s a bunch of little icons and clip art things on the phone that it came with, but I can’t imagine anyone actually using them for anything.