Telepocalypse

Powerful products

These Philips phones with extra-long battery life caught my eye. It's an example of good product strategy, emphasising a capability that some segment of the market will value over and above yet another half-baked "convergence" feature.

If I were them, I'd go much further. For example, one major reason I chose my MP3 player was its 30-hour battery life. A "must have" for intensive travel and forgetful travellers. (It does need a bit of Philips industrial design magic though -- but I'm a happy customer nonetheless). Philips could create a whole sub-brand or co-brand ("Philips Duracell") around high-endurance portable/mobile goods. The brand might also stretch to moderately ruggedised products. You'd take the latest battery technology coming out of the lab, the priciest rare-earth metals to make it work, some state-of-the-art low-power silicon, and package up otherwise commodity components and software with it. As the list of portable gizmos we carry grows, and as battery technology becomes more of a dominant limitation, your market can only grow too.