Mobile phone maker Nokia added a moon goddess, a slider, and a classic to its lineup on Thursday. One model, the 8600 Luna, is a high-priced, stainless-steel-and-glass "fashion phone," and the other two, the 6500 classic and the 6500 slide, are intended for the midrange of the market.
Using language more often employed to sell a hot new sports car, Nokia describes the 8600 Luna as having a "mysterious allure." Beneath a semi-opaque smoked glass case, "a gentle keypad  illumination pulsates" like a "heartbeat" as this "organic, virtually alive form" waits for a call.
Nokia Senior Vice President Heikki Norta said that the company had an "obsession" for every detail in this device. "We took painstaking effort to ensure that the experience delivered by every surface -- from the smoothness of glass against the face to the warmth of the stainless steel in the palm to the superior tactile feedback of the keypad -- would surpass any and all expectation."
Nokia's Fashion Statement
Beyond the surface attributes that Nokia compares favorably to its namesake, the Roman goddess of moonlight, the Luna offers several useful features, including a micro-USB port that enables charging, audio, and data connectivity through one connection. There is support for quad-band GSM , EDGE, GPRS, and HSCSD, as well as video-recording capabilities, a music player, and a 2-megapixel camera.
The cell phone is "the most personal of personal technologies," said Avi Greengart, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis. "You carry it with you all the time, so manufacturers can differentiate it primarily on the basis of fashion." He compared the mobile world to the car industry, where, once users could assume all cars had the ability to provide basic transportation, differences emerged and purchase decisions were often driven on the basis of style.
"Nokia has done extraordinarily well with the fashion phone," he noted, "especially in Asia." Greengart said that the U.S. market, in contrast, is dominated by the carriers, and the carriers don't generally offer fashion phones.
Greengart noted that the Luna is the successor to Nokia's 8800 series, which has sold "well over a million units." In contrast, he said that Motorola started with the fashionable Razr and "turned it into a volume play" by lowering the price. But now, he suggested, Motorola is left "with no fashion phone" because the Razr price is so low and the model is so widely accessible. (continued...)
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