Technology Industry

Complex phones must be easy to use.(News)

RCR Wireless News, March, 2004

Byline: MIKE DANO -New, advanced handsets dominated much of the talk on the CTIA Wireless show floor, but it was an industry outsider who managed to succinctly sum up the industry's prevailing message. "A phone has to be a phone,'' said hip-hop music pioneer Russell Simmons during his keynote comments.

Simmons is the co-founder and chairman of Def Jam Records and current head of Rush Communications. "Functionality is key.'' Although mobile-phone makers stressed the technological innovations in their latest round of product releases-which included GSM/CDMA world phones, W-CDMA devices and megapixel camera phones-most company executives stressed the importance of usability over technology. "We try to take things from the end-user point of...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.

BNET TalkbackShare your ideas and expertise on this topic

CXO UnpluggedSmart Business interviews on BNET

See and hear how senior level executives across the Asia Pacific are developing smart business ideas across a variety of sectors. The focus is on the future, and on how businesses need to evolve.