The BBC has an article on the Mobile World Congress next week,
where they note that smartphone sales are down -- maybe because
they all look alike...:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43045682Seems to me this might be good news for the somewhat different
Gemini!
Some extracts from the article:
[blockquote] Is smartphone hardware treading water while industrial
designers wait for bendy screens and other flexible,
futuristic components to make more radical models
possible? And will sales continue to decline until
they do?
IDC recently reported the global market was down 6.3%
over the October-to-December quarter in 2017 compared with
the same three months the previous year, while Strategy
Analytics put the fall at 8.8%.
"The tragedy is that we had two decades of incredible
innovation with flip-phones, candy-bar phones, sliders,
round phones, square phones - all kinds of different
things, but the world changed in 2007 when Steve Jobs
pulled the iPhone out of his pocket, and had what became
the dominant design."We've since gravitated to the black
rectangle with a touchscreen as the form factor of choice,
and it feels like we've now reached a technology plateau
where firms compete by offering marginal changes around
the edges." [Ben Wood -- CCS Insight]
Even so, there does appear to be an appetite for something
"a bit different".The big story from last year's MWC was
the Nokia 3310.The "reimagined" version of the Finnish
company's classic handset had both physical number keys
and a screen that bulged at its bottom.
"Hardware is always the easiest thing to sell - if it looks
different you get consumers attention, and then you build
from there," [Carolina Milanesi -- Creative Strategies]
That's not to say there aren't some companies attempting
something out of the ordinary.
[/blockquote]...and they mention a few products -- but not the Gemini! (:-()
