August 15, 2005
In Mobile Phones, Older Users Say, More Is Less
At a time when cellphones are letting users do more tricks, from video calling to downloading digital music, one of the latest models from Vodafone has no camera, no browser and hardly any icons, reports the WSJ Instead of being sleeker and cooler than ever, the phone is large and ordinary-looking.
What it is, though, is easy to use, and if Vodafone is right, the market will love it. That's because of who its market is: people getting up in years.
Vodafone is trying to appeal to a large market of middle-aged and older people with a handset they won't find intimidating. The company's European target market is everyone who's 40 years of age or over and isn't issued a cellphone by an employer.
If the battery on the Vodafone Simply, as it's called, gets low, the phone doesn't signal this with a tiny icon somewhere. Instead, on its screen, the words "please charge" appear. If a message is waiting, a light flashes, like in old-fashioned answering machines.
To help people who tend to lose their phones around the house and let the battery run down, this one comes with a stand that serves as a place to stow the thing, and charges it while it's there."
Related elder phones:
-- Czechs Making Cell Phones for Elderly - Targeting elderly customers, a Czech company has started manufacturing extra large cellular phones.
-- A cell phone for grandparents - Swiss mobile operator Orange launched a cell phone for the elderly, with just three colored buttons, called Mobi-Click.
-- Phones For Young and Old in South Korea - Korean Carriers have started to sell phones designed for the most overlooked demographics: the very young and the very old.
-- «The Elderphone» - Click Senior-Tel is a full-blown GSM phone for the elderly and confused - with just three buttons.
-- Start-up launches easy-to-use mobile phone - Mobi-Click is generating excitement with its new range of phones that work using just three button.
-- Seniors to be offered S`911-only' cell phones - Cell phones that dial only 911 will be given free to seniors in unincorporated Palm Beach County.
-- Finding the Right Handset For Older Cellphone Users - Currently, seniors make up about 15% of overall cellphone users".
-- Simplified Phones for the Elderly - Mobile telematics company Benefon launches a new cell phone called «Benefon Seraph», it's meant to be a "guardian angel" phone. Ultra simplified with only 3 buttons, it allows for direct dialing to predefined numbers.
-- Verilocation - A mobile phone tracker, Verilocation pinpoints a cell user's wherabouts. It is also expected to be of interest to domestic users; anyone who needs to locate someone such as an elderly relative travelling away from home, small children out on their own...
-- Donated phones can help seniors - Senior centers in Michigan are asking the community for phone donations to better arm elderly people during an emergency.
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