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The Deal Killer—When One Missing Feature Kills A Sale

When people say companies “just don’t get it” it’s not often clear what it is the companies are missing—and sometimes the companies do “get it”, they just disagree. However, in this little write-up on Wired it’s very clear what the company is missing—a standard earphone jack on a music handset. The device in question is the Samsung Blackjack, which has a proprietary port (for which the earphones have to be bought seperately, apparently) or Bluetooth. I’m not sure what Samsung’s game is here, but any handset that is targeted towards a particular content niche (music, video, games, whatever) should be as simple and as standard as possible, otherwise the potential market size is cut dramatically.

Dec 11, 2006 11:25 PM ET

Posted In: Entertainment, Music, Gadgets

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Comments (2)

Dec 12, 2006 3:17 PM

I never really got the impression that the Blackjack is a “music handset”.  I would not have been shocked in the least bit to discover that I had to buy a special adapter or set of headphones to listen to music.  I think the more valid question would be the one 99% of consumers ask when they try to plug their iPod headphones into their mass-market phone only to discover they don’t fit.  That question is WTF?

Music Phones Blow

Dec 13, 2006 12:15 PM

Thanks to a recent story about RIM suing Samsung over this, and some e-mails, I realise that the Blackjack is not a music-oriented phone but a business-like Blackberry phone. I still think all phones should come with a standard earphone jack, but it’s far less important on this phone than on—say—a Walkman phone.

James Pearce

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