Maven Mapper's

For years mobile phones have been evolving into a commodity. Convergence of cameras and PDA's and MP3 players delayed this process slightly, but not forever. 

Mobile Phones are now definitely commodities.

That means that outside of 1 million people buying iPhones in a world wide population in excess of 8 billion, people do not buy a phone just because of the phone itself.

Pre-commoditization carriers such as Vodaphone, Verizon, At&t, Sprint, and my personal favorite T-Mobile would subsidize the extraordinary cost of mobile phones with their service plan contracts. 

Never mind the fact that your service contract could be sooo much cheaper if it did not have to cover the cost of your phone and everyone else's phone!

Now one of the things that helped degrade the perceived value of mobile phones despite the increasing technology getting slammed into the phones like a giant block of cheese getting slammed into a future Cheezit commercial was the display of too many phones in phone shops in kiosks, malls and urban centers around the world. 

Its ironic that this happened as in the early days the phone carriers needed every mobile phone shop they could get to get the word out and get people to adopt mobile phones as a technology.

In the image  at the top of this article, we feature an online example of this commoditization effect, but we are not trying to pick on the company in the example.  They are trying to stand out in contrast to mobile phone shops where you typically get piped through a process where you pick your commodity phone, pick your commodity carrier, and your commodity plan.  At least with this example, you get the excitement of the phone packed with the value and bundle of a fun game system.

They are essentially acknowledging the issue and like a judo master, they are employing a retail technique that in the states has become famous as the Costco model.  They are packaging multiple consumer electronics together in a value added bundle.  Its very interesting that they are packaging a game system with a price point almost equivalent to that of the phone with the phone. 

Sure beats getting a cheap accessory or something!