Can your smartphone deliver unique value?
Any modern smartphone has a value of $500-$3,000 per month to me. I don’t get more unique value out of any particular phone any more. Think about all of the things my phone does for me; think about how many more people or devices I would need to have to be productive. I was thinking about the video that showed what my S9 replaced:
What can Apple, Samsung, Google, or a generic developer do to create something of unique value in their newest model phones? What would be worth X dollars more? For me, the types of products that I want to see are either health-driven, emotionally-driven, or entertainment-driven.
Clearly there is value from the emotional, but I don’t, for example, have a need for Tinder in my life. (I like that it is there if I ever need it but I am pretty happy with my emotional place in the world.) There is entertainment value, but again Netflix and audiobooks meet my level of needs. So I will focus instead on medical needs (not wants) for the purpose of this article. What I might like to see include:
- A biometric patch, replaced at least monthly, that is tied to the phone and that watches my health. The value of that is hundreds of dollars a month to me in better health. I want to know when my blood oxygen level is out of whack, or if I am about to have a heart attack two hours before it happens.
- An automatic calorie counter that scans every meal and gives me a count for where I stand each day. I would be willing to have a camera on my glasses for this to work.
- Automatic font size adjustment based on how far I am from the phone and if I am wearing glasses or not. I am back to using an iPad, and the font size is not as easy as it used to be for me.
- The “mom phone” that reminds me in a gentle way, from scanning my emails/texts without programming or tracking, that I have a kids’ play that is starting in three hours, reducing my stress in the process.
But to get to the point where I am willing to pay the added value, or where my health insurance plan or employer is willing to pay, it has to be able to do the “more.”
To maintain that premium pricing, new products have to give a long-term serious advantage to their users. It’s fairly hard to innovate at this level; it is even harder to make things that can’t be reverse-engineered. For Samsung, Google, and Apple, this is a race in which the only winner in the long term is the user.
If you want more of my money, sell me the biometric patch, the food tracking camera, and the mother modular that will remind me that my kids will be devastated if I miss that play.
Until then, I am pretty happy with my current phone, which replaces my needs for:
- An assistant
- An atlas (both city maps and country maps)
- A travel agent
- A watch
- 300 square feet of living space
- Movie library
- Book library
- CD collection
- My TV
- Three to five pounds of stuff to carry around
- Research team
- Financial calculator
- Personal banker
- Camera
- Social planner
- Pulse and blood oxygen reader
- Work email access
- And the list goes on
What is/was the cost of my Samsung S9? $550 on Black Friday and $70 per month to T-Mobile. There was a value payback in two to three weeks. But I could have gotten the same ROI with a $300 phone. Any smartphone made in the last two to three years can deliver 95% of the value shown above, primarily because of the app store and the open platforms.
Just because it saves me $30,000 per year does not mean I am not going to go to the lowest cost reasonable vendor and only pay $550, or maybe even $400 and buy the Pixel 3a.
The question is, what’s next for the industry?
Since I don’t have a signed contract yet, I am open to workshopping almost anything for anyone. If you want me to come workshop your product or business, and have an interest in possibly working with me, drop me a line. I am not willing to work with non-public data. But my workshop will be a pretty powerful half-day. The conversations have been great so far, and I think they will lead to some pretty amazing job opportunities.