Creating artificial needs, the sinews of phone industry?

Résumé du document

The cell-phone equipment rate in the UK has reached the amazing level of 112% (i.e.: on average over one cell-phone per inhabitant). With this rate, the UK sets a European record, yet the average rate on the continent is above 75% (France: 86%). These figures are the result of the mobile phone market's skyrocketing for the past 5 years. But what is actually most striking about this market is not the evolution of its volume as much as its qualitative development. Indeed, the innovation cycle for cell-phones has been shortening and is nowadays close to three months. The protagonists of this innovation process are the cell-phone manufacturers and the phone operators. If anyone could have foreseen that such a technological market was going to be the field for tremendous innovations, only the happy few might have foreshadowed the creativity that both constructors and operators showed when they integrated gadgets such as cameras or services such as the internet in ever so tiny cell-phones.

Extraits

[...] Yet if creating artificial needs is the sinews of the phone industry, isn't it also that to modern capitalism? Joseph-Alois Schumpeter tried drawing our attention to the fact that consumption needed to be sustained by the introduction of new products for the economy to keep running. It is clear that the introduction of information and communication technologies were the main reason why the global economy picked up in the 90s'. Another economist, J-K Galbraith, advocated the idea that as society becomes relatively more affluent, private business must "create" consumer wants through advertising. [...]

[...] The phone industry seems to be creating artificial needs, and the public can realize that and still pay for them. Thus, the phone industry does not necessarily create dependence when they get consumers to use their technologies regularly. The SMS is a blatant success. An astounding 91% of consumers declare that this technology is essential to them. The question remains though. Is this a success because the phone industry created a new need, and did it so well that people actually believe that need always existed? [...]

[...] Only 37% of those who pay for the internet actually use it. Those figures show us that you don't necessarily have to create a need to sell certain technologies. If every cell phones has a camera (Nokia decided in 2006 to include a camera in every new model), many consumers will find themselves paying for a camera and not use it. Some technologies do not correspond to any need of those who were, at a certain point, interested by the internet technology, cease to use it. [...]

[...] As Didier Lombard, chairman of France Télécom, puts it: want to bring simplicity to our customers, the first step towards digital paradise!” Perception of the end consumer The tools of our observation Survey Our aim is to determine whether or not the phone industry creates needs out of scratch, or respond to existing need. The notions of “artificial need” and “real need” are vague. Thus, it is interesting to look at the consumer's point of view concerning this issue. Also, phone sellers can tell us how they spur consumers to bye their product, how many they sell. [...]

[...] I think that the increase of cell phone use meets a real human need: that of intimacy,” says Pélissier. And it is fundamental to expound this idea in order to understand truly the cell phone phenomenon. Take a regular British family for example: everyone has a cell phones. Now ask them to look in one another's mobiles. Each and every member of the family will tell you that it is private. A study conducted by the Sociology Department of the Swedish University Lund has shown that “mobile phones are said to be used, especially by youth, in identity work as a symbolic capital to show that they belong to a certain group” . [...]