[wordup] Why phones are replacing cars

[Adam Shand]

From: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2628969

Why phones are replacing cars
And why this is a good thing

Apr 29th 2004
 From The Economist print edition

“PARKS beautifully”, boasts an advertising hoarding for the XDA II, 
above a glimpse of its sleek silver lines. “Responsive to every turn”, 
declares another poster. Yet these ads, seen recently in London, are 
selling not a car, but an advanced kind of mobile phone. Maybe that 
should not be a surprise. Using automotive imagery to sell a handset 
makes a lot of sense for, in many respects, mobile phones are replacing 
cars.

Phones are now the dominant technology with which young people, and 
urban youth in particular, now define themselves. What sort of phone 
you carry and how you customise it says a great deal about you, just as 
the choice of car did for a previous generation. In today's congested 
cities, you can no longer make a statement by pulling up outside a bar 
in a particular kind of car. Instead, you make a similar statement by 
displaying your mobile phone, with its carefully chosen ringtone, 
screen logo and slip cover. Mobile phones, like cars, are fashion 
items: in both cases, people buy new ones far more often than is 
actually necessary. Both are social technologies that bring people 
together; for teenagers, both act as symbols of independence. And cars 
and phones alike promote freedom and mobility, with unexpected social 
consequences.

The design of both cars and phones started off being defined by 
something that was no longer there. Cars were originally horseless 
carriages, and early models looked suitably carriage-like; only later 
did car designers realise that cars could be almost any shape they 
wanted to make them. Similarly, mobile phones used to look much like 
the push-button type of fixed-line phones, only without the wire. But 
now they come in a bewildering range of strange shapes and sizes.

Less visibly, as the structure of the mobile-phone industry changes, it 
increasingly resembles that of the car industry (see article). 
Handset-makers, like carmakers, build some models themselves and 
outsource the design and manufacturing of others. Specialist firms 
supply particular sub-assemblies in both industries. Outwardly 
different products are built on a handful of common underlying 
“platforms” in both industries, to reduce costs. In each case, branding 
and design are becoming more important as the underlying technology 
becomes increasingly interchangeable. In phones, as previously happened 
in cars, established western companies are facing stiff competition 
from nimbler Asian firms. Small wonder then that Nokia, the world's 
largest handset-maker, recruited its design chief, Frank Nuovo, from 
BMW.

That mobile phones are taking on many of the social functions of cars 
is to be welcomed. While it is a laudable goal that everyone on earth 
should someday have a mobile phone, cars' ubiquity produces mixed 
feelings. They are a horribly inefficient mode of transport—why move a 
ton of metal around in order to transport a few bags of groceries?—and 
they cause pollution, in the form of particulates and nasty gases. A 
chirping handset is a much greener form of self-expression than an old 
banger. It may irritate but it is safe. In the hands of a drunk driver, 
a car becomes a deadly weapon. That is not true of a phone (though 
terrorists recently rigged mobile phones to trigger bombs in Madrid). 
Despite concern that radiation from phones and masts causes health 
problems, there is no clear evidence of harm, and similar worries about 
power lines and computer screens proved unfounded. Less pollution, less 
traffic, fewer alcohol-related deaths and injuries: the switch from 
cars to phones cannot happen soon enough.

Copyright © 2004 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All 
rights reserved.