Thursday, July 23, 2009 |
13:28 - Controlling the conversation
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10293905-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0
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Maybe it's because I'm so late to the cellphone game; but I wonder if I'm the only person who finds the term "handset" to be stupid, grating, and unnecessary.
AT&T's earnings report early Thursday showed the company taking a hit from the expense of the new iPhone 3GS. "I'd like to pay less for the handset, go figure," he said.
Pay less for the what? Is there something stopping you from saying the word phone?
The word "handset" has this weird, Luddite reek to it, like the service providers have invented it in order to denigrate the role the actual hardware plays in the cellphone ecosystem. To the customer—well, to me, anyway, and I'm fully aware that I'm probably a very atypical customer—the phone is all there is to the network, and the only role the network plays is when it irritates you by disappearing at the most inconvenient possible times. And when it sends you its monthly bill. But when they then lay this "handset" trip on you, it's like they think the network would be a fine business model if it weren't for all those pesky customers with their ridiculous and bothersome little contraptions they hold in their hands.
Every time I hear some cellphone CEO use the word "handset", all I hear is "We know we're ancient and irrelevant and your technology is way cooler than ours, but as long as we own the infrastructure we get to pretend it's the other way around. Ha ha ha!"
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