The newest development in the smartphones market are the introduction of ‘companion phones’. Whereas market leaders in the smartphone segment Apple, Samsung and Huawei have produced increasingly bigger smartphones over the last decade, the newest trend in smartphones could be extremely small phones. A newly launched phone, using the brand name Palm, is the size of a credit card and is only 5.5 millimetres thick. It offers most functionalities of a normal smartphone, including two cameras and making use of the 4g network.
The Palm phone is promoted as a ‘companion phone’, a small phone as a complement to your main smartphone. In its marketing, Palm claims that the companion phone enables people to take a break from their main phones, despite being a fully functioning mobile device of its own.
I think that companion phones actually have great potential, although I do believe it is promoted wrongly. I do not think people desire a second phone to carry around for the same purpose as their main phone. However, I do believe companion phones could disrupt the business phone segment. As many young professionals aim to keep up a strict distinction between life and work, they tend to keep separate phones for work and private use. However, having to carry around two separate phones brings along some inconvenience. Therefore, due to the small and thin design of Palm, ‘companion phones’ could be an excellent alternative as a business phone. Moreover, as business phones are mostly just used to call, they require less features than regular smartphones, increasing the potential of ‘companion phones’.
‘Companion phones’ could be a new opportunity in the saturated market of smartphones. Besides Palm’s version, other ‘companion phones’ are entering the market as well. NTT Docomo, Japan’s biggest telecoms firm, launched their own companion phone only a few days after the launch of Palm. And who knows, in a few months, we might just expect the launch of the ‘companion phones’ of Apple and Samsung.
Interesting article!! When I first read about ‘companion phones’ my initial thoughts were that these phones are addressed to users who wish to escape their current dependency on smartphones. I agree with your remark that they wrongly marketed, however I would suggest that companion phones should targeted at consumers who are looking for a less cognitively demanding experience, a phone that still completes the tasks you normally would with a smartphone yet presents the user less room for distraction. While there are clear differences, I see a number of links between companion phones and ‘dumb phones’.
Nice I like this technology! Really agree on new phones becoming way too big! But does this companion phone support multiple applications like WhatsApp? I can believe that a part of the population want to change to this phone as their main phone, but without some daily used features I don’t actually think that they are going to be a success.. There are some social standards nowadays that other people expect from you to be available 24/7! And I was wondering what kind of mobile operating system they use? Great post!