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| Keeping fashion on speed dial |
| Friday, November 10, 2006 |
For Denise Albert, choosing a cell phone has nothing to do with ring tones, instant messages or megapixels.
"To me, it's what it looks like," says Albert, a 53-year-old campaign fundraiser from suburban Columbus, Ohio. "I want a good design. Period."
Albert represents a fashion trend marketers are tapping into as they offer mobile phones with sleeker designs and in more colors, such as blue and pink, and accessories ranging from charms and stickers to crystals and tiny designer purses. Though some accessories are for necessity -- such as in-car chargers -- others are for personalization.
"Where we had A or B, now we have A through Z," says Neil Strother, research director for mobile devices at The NPD Group market research firm.
Cell-phone accessories -- from decorations to holsters to hands-free devices -- bring in $1 billion a year at the retail level in the U.S., and the market is growing 10 percent to 15 percent annually, says Roger Entner, a Boston-based analyst with the market research firm Ovum.
"It's growing rapidly because Americans see cell phones more and more as items for self-expression," says Strother.
Sprint has teamed with Dooney & Burke to offer purses that take the place of cell-phone cases -- an Italian crocodile-leather wristlet was listed at $124.99 on Sprint's Web site.
A few bucks can buy a charm featuring Hello Kitty, SpongeBob, the Supergirl logo or other designs at a Claire's accessory shop or one of many Internet sites.
"We see girls decorating their phones and, a week later, they take everything off and decorate it differently," says Chuck Strottman, director of marketing for Tween Brands Inc..
Kid-sized oval Firefly Mobile phones sold well last holiday season at Tween Brands' Limited Too stores, which market to girls ages 7 to 14, he says. Girls can change the phone's look with patterned, translucent and glow-in-the dark shells.
Marcia Murphy of central Ohio decorated her leather cell-phone case with pink and silver removable adhesive sequins to match her pink Motorola Motorazr phone. Murphy's daughters, ages 10 and 11, also used the sequins to decorate the case for the cell phone they share.
"Anything for bling, as far as they're concerned," says Murphy, 44. "I guess I'm a little bit for bling as well."
At the close of 2005, there were about 208 million wireless subscribers in the United States, representing about 69 percent of the population, according to data collected by CTIA -- The Wireless Association trade group.
Handset vendors are now pushing fashion as a way to differentiate themselves in a crowded market, says Avi Greengart of the research firm Current Analysis Inc. But consumers in the United States are well behind Europeans and Asians in picking up on the trend toward fashion accessories, Greengart says.
Analysts say fashion is starting to carry the same weight as function when it comes to choosing the phone.
"Right now, I would say fashion trumps technology, two years ago technology trumped fashion," Entner says. "Basically one catches up with the other. Probably two years from now technology will trump fashion." |
posted by mrfrans @ 3:08 AM   |
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