I was talking to Swaroop the other day and we came up with this interesting concept. How about starting a company which makes niche personal electronic gadgets? How would it be if you can gift your mom a mobile phone which is customized to her(with larger key buttons)? How about customizing a mobile/radio/torch to your grand mom? And all this at an affordable cost. I understand the economies of scale, however, if such customizable products can come in the affordable range, doesn't it sound exciting. Read on for more...
We were discussing about custom mobiles. I should be able to order the features I need (ala. Dell), the look I need. An example might be having my families photo on the back of my mobile, or a key pad layout with just four names on it, or a mobile which can jump!!. Is this not possible, I don't think so. Sure there are some issues, read Swaroop's post to get a better hang of them. But that is where the never say die spirit lies.
What I had in mind for mobiles was something what Dilip Chhabria did to the cars. Have extensible kits, modify them, build prototypes. Does this not open up amazing opportunities on what can be built.
Mind you I am not referring to customizations which cost a zillion.Check out BugLabs, what I have in mind is something similar to start with.
What kind of products do you want customized?Is their a market for such products? Will you buy one such product?
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Mobile Fetish
Posted by Unknown at Wednesday, July 23, 2008
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4 comments:
I think this is a great idea - the market for new media devices/products does exist in India - especially devices for casual and lifestyle usage.
Its time designers did some headbanging with technologists to come up with these new media devices - a lot of designers are too busy designing the next teapot or website and too many technologists are busy making frameworks and chips and such.
The one challenge would be to develop the entire ecosystem to take care of pricing, distribution, marketing and such.
hi amit,
i agree..
however here are a few challenges.
unlike the pc industry the rest of the electronics industry does not come up with components which make assembling easy.
Saying that this gives a beautiful opportunity in the area of developing custom products.
again my inspiration is DC!!
As a side thought it will be great if we can have monthly/quarterly meets where we have these folks coming over and talking to us.
Ramjee,
Useful Idea. But think of implementation. I dont think it is possible even with a small number. Unless you have volume, it is difficult to get components at affordable rate from taiwan/china. Try getting one LCD screen vs 1000 of them...
But still it might be a grt idea if you position yourself to high end customers. (eg: Customized designer mobiles for celebrities..etc)
Leo,
you are right. you and I very well know how difficult it is to source the parts. however, as you rightly said, I am not saying the target market is for every one. it's niche.. !!
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