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April 19, 2006: Thin Is In: A New Trend in Cell Phones

Doing some research into recent earnings announcements by some of the largest cell phone manufacturers prompted the idea for this article.

Motorola, yesterday, announced that sales of their razor-thin RAZR cell phones allowed them to increase global market share by 4.8%. Although this did not boost overall earnings for the first quarter enough to meet estimates, Motorola has certainly proved that thin is in.

Only a week before Motorola's earnings announcement, Samsung, the 3rd largest cell phone provider in the world announced a host of new cell phones aimed at the US market. Their flagship phone is the Samsung t509, which at 9.6 mm makes it the thinnest US market cell phone. In addition, their new line of phones due out in summer 2006 are targeted to the growing "thin phone" market. Samsung currently produces the thinnest cell phone in the world with its X828 phone - currently 6.9 millimeters thick.

While the release of the RAZR v3 has sparked a thin phone revolution, some of us have to stand up and ask - how thin can these phones go? Are these thinner cell phones any more dangerous than their thicker counterparts? They're definitely more breakable, that's for sure. A thin cell phone also means less material between you, and the phone internals, and that can't be a good thing either.

In similar news, an old article at youngmoney.com reported the invention of the "disposable cell phone." As thin as 3 credit cards placed together, the phone (created by toy inventor Randi Altschul) was supposed to be first - and only - cell phone destined for the garbage can. The phone was "expected to sell for under $20, which [would] include 60 prepaid minutes of calling time."

This article was written in 2004 and it seems this idea never took off. I have to say - I'm a little surprised that no major manufacturer took up the project.

(The Future of Cellular: Disposable Cell Phones! http://www.youngmoney.com/technology/cell_phones/020416_03 www.youngmoney.com 19 April 2006.)

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