SAMSUNG RELEASE DIVA S7070

Mobile technology has become a booming business and competition is fierce. Nokia are still miles ahead in the race with over 40% of the overall market share and Apple has a staggering 10% with only the iPhone. New releases are constant from every manufacturer and it is hard to keep up with them all, not to mention the difficulty the manufacturers have in staying not only fresh, but trend-setting.

So Samsung’s latest release is truly puzzling. The Diva S7070 is clearly aimed at women, from the name ‘Diva’ to the diamond-shaped quilted back design and the pink background theme. On the one hand, it is a nice touch and presumably female consumers will appreciate the offering. Yet on the other hand, this is a guaranteed way to minimise sales by blocking off a huge section of the market, ie. men.

It would be fair to expect the device to be utterly amazing then, to compensate this guaranteed loss of sales. Puzzlingly though, it isn’t. It has neither 3G nor wi-fi capabilities, both of which are a must in today’s world of push email, IM and facebook widgets (although it does have social network features which should in theory make the latter pretty easy).

This S7070 will hit the market this month, so the sales will tell us whether women actually appreciate a device aimed solely at them or not. Either way, the success is guaranteed to be hindered by it lacking standard features that even the most basic of others now have.

by Rich White