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I received a question on LinkedIn from a former colleague. I'm sharing the question and answering it as well on this blog since it's related to what I've been thinking about mobile phones for quite some time.

The question (exactly as asked, bold highlight mine):

What should be added "into" or "with" a mobile phone, in India, to promote its sale? While creating a new mobile phone brand what should be taken care of/added to have a killer composition……. enforcing a new mobile phone buyer (of tier 2 & 3 cities in INDIA) to go for it? May it be bollywood content or regional language or good speakers or cheap or good looking or …………………..??

Guess we get the essence of the question. Do we? When conceptualizing products, much too often the word 'added' is used – in thinking and in conversations. It's such a loaded word and one with such positive connotations that it can convincingly obscure all the issues on hand. And so all of us would think about 'what more can be done' or 'what can be added'… No wonder, it adds to the problems. For me, all that this word means is 'how can I make the best of the opportunity?'. In that sense, it could also be that instead of 'additions' we could be talking of 'pruning'. Therefore, I'll rephrase the question:

What kind of product (mobile phone) should be launched by a new brand in India?

There could be a few possibilities. Here's one option which I think will work. I call it the TALKER'S PHONE. There are so many lower-end phones and all of them are trying to squeeze in as many facilities as possible into a small little thing and at a low price tag. In the process, what all of them seem to miss out badly is giving the consumer a phone which does precisely what it is meant for. Great talking! And I would suggest brand the phone as such instead of looking for some fancy names. So what would this TALKER'S PHONE be like?

1. Great Phone Book Memory – Current crop of lower-end (in terms of price) phones put a lot of limitations on phone book memory. Make it 2500 phone book entries.
2. Great SMS Memory – Like email services these days, there should be almost unlimited capacity for storing SMSes. Which means a person can store an obscene amount of SMSes. 5000, let's say. Deleting SMSes is not such a great idea. This phone might just be the solution. Better if there's no cap on SMS storage. What I mean is that if one can link the mobile to an external storage solution and transfer old SMSes to this storage and access it on the web any time…
3. Great Keypad – One of the biggest put-offs in lower-end phones is the quality of keypads. If it has be a TALKER'S PHONE, the keypad should be of supreme quality. Should have big keys, should feel sturdy but soft but refined when pressing the keys…
4. Recording Conversations – A person using TALKER'S PHONE would definitely talk a lot. And out of these, many conversations would be very important. This phone would have a facility to enable recording of an important conversation as and when required. How is it technically possible, the designer has to figure out.

I can specify more details but this gives you the drift. Right? I would be the first one to buy this kinda phone, even if priced a little higher. What about you?