SideKick 3 Appeals to Young and Young at Heart
John Biggs writes in The New York Times about Courting a Hot Market With Cool Phone Service: “… right now the object of lust among [young people] is the T-Mobile Sidekick 3, which hit the market last month.”
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According to a survey conducted by Jupiter Research last December, almost half of young people aged 13 to 16 own cellphones. Many companies are competing for the attention of this market.
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The Sidekick 3 costs a hefty $300 for T-Mobile subscribers with a two-year contract, plus an additional $30 a month for data service. But that hasn’t stopped the incessant chatter about it in chat rooms and on message boards.
“The first big teen phone was the Razr,” Mr. Lulla said. “Everyone has one. So now it’s the Sidekick 3.”
The new Sidekick is smaller than its predecessor and has a better camera. It also has a unique scroll wheel that lights up in different colors. While it has some organizer-type features, the Sidekick 3 is designed to make it easy to send e-mail and shoot off quick messages to the phones or PC’s of friends.
“The core users are young people or the young at heart,” said Chidam Chidambaram, vice president of marketing for T-Mobile.
I need to have a look at the SideKick 3, since I’m feeling young at heart.
July 13th, 2006 at 10:04 am
How young do you feel?
IMHO the Sidekick 3 is an unintersting tweener product. It’s still a poor phone, a weak camera, a horrible game platform, a fair email tool, and a great text chatting machine, all at an expensive price. It will be bought as bling and used primarily by teen TXT and IM freaks. Lindsay Lohan will be given 5 of them studded with precious and semi-precious stones, will use them at premiers and parties for 2 months, and then will lose them all without regret.
Content is king, especially in the personal/portable device world.
If your idea of “can’t live without” content is messaging, then try an SK3. If your main content is email, buy a Blackberry. If your content is movies, get a PSP. If voice is your main content, then any quality phone will likely make you happy. If you need a great PDA with reasonable voice capabilities, then you’re back to the Treo (PalmOS, please) or for masochists a WM5 HTC platform.
If your idea of killer content is games (i.e. you want to have fun with your handheld toy), then buy a Nintendo DS Lite. Ron, you are *so* young that I think you’d be all a giggle with an NDSL and its integrated Wi-Fi for chatting and web surfing on TWO screens. Plus it plays movies and absolutely addictive games.
If you haven’t done so, go out NOW and try an NDSL with Brain Age, New Super Mario Bros, Final Fantasy, etc. There’s even a massage attachment available for the NDS to sooth tired muscles after playing too many games. Or so I’m told.