Orange France Chooses Pink Décor
There are reports that Orange France will make a pre Christmas internet only launch of the Nokia Lumia 800, in girlie pink. Take note gentilhomme, slip one into her Christmas stocking.
As the Orange Brand is the flagship of France Telecom, we can reasonably expect Paris to take on a distinctly magenta hue if the French adopt Nokia’s venture into Windows Mango.
As Microsoft are reportedly sweetening Nokia’s marketing budget to a rumored one million dollars, the Avenue des Champs-Élysées may take on an early spring aura as Les Orange subscribers press a pink Nokia to warm their ear.
France Telecom
The FranceTelecom Group reported 220 million customers; of these 160 million were Orange mobile subscribers and a further 15 million broadband (ADSL) users. However these numbers are spread across subscribers in 23 countries; some major like the UK and France itself, others less prominent like Niger or Guinea.
Windows OS
While a pink Nokia mobile is far from being unique, or even newsworthy amongst all the bling phone offerings that flood the junior market, it does offer an opportunity to begin the Holiday season with a festive comment on the subject of Nokia.
Support from Microsoft will be invaluable as Nokia struggle to return to prominence in an often-irrational market. Equally one can argue that Microsoft Mango needs Nokia just as much; or ANYBODY, to seed acceptance o their Windows operating system.
Smart Haute couture Phone’s
From the mobile phone’s inception there has been a minor rebellion from the female species, attempting by the addition of tasteful color, to emasculate the mobile device. To little effect. The distinctly masculine (Michael Douglas in Wall Street) Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, launched in 1983 is only marginally more macho than today’s BlackBerry 9900.
Of course, there are Princess models such as the Toshiba T001 and Junior phones like the Kyocera K001 that not even Prince would be seen dead with.
There was of course a period after the turn of the century when Nokia offered subtle shape modifications to their standard Nokia 5110. Today they look more like flared trousers than feminine design friendly.
Interested In The Design History?
Scroll through webdesignerdepot.com “The Evolution of Cell Phone Design Between 1983-2009”. Some fascinating memories are recorded, including my own favorite design, the Motorola Razr V3.
Also of interest was the authors observation that design priority has historically been dictated more by Asians, where the cellular phone has long been ubiquitous, than the USA where the cell phone has been less vital to the average person (and reception less than satisfactory).
Is A Pink Orange Of Consequence?
Probably not. No one can predict the success of this marketing ploy. As an internet only offering there is a strong suspicion that Nokia and Orange are hedging bets; keeping the Nokia Lumia name in front of the public while holding back full promotion until Microsoft release an upgraded Mango OS.