What if you got a brand new phone every month in share economy ?
As comsumer computing grows at a very quick speed, we all got some tiny computing products in our pocket. One of the most typical thing is mobile phone.
Yes, everybody got a phone, and most of them paid a lot of dollars to get a newest one every couples of month or every year. I start to wondering if that amount of money spent in those pocket-super computers can be optimized after seeing the succesful subcribe-rental model in some tech-Apparel company.
LE TOTE, for example, is a fashion discovery platform that connects brands with consumers through a rental model. The company aims at female comsumer, they offer fashionable clothes which can only charges shopaholic at a very cheap price monthly. You set a price each month, then you keep receiving different beautiful clothes. If you don’t want that dress, you can return to LE TOTE anytime.
Woman love clothes, but what about other staff and what about man ? A lot of start-ups are doing such a lady cloth thing(such as Rent The Runway/Shoedazzle/Stylemint/Material World/Tradesy/Poshmark), and technology product that drives gentleman crazy like a bitch should give a shot now.
I would like to discuss one kind of service that focus on moblie phone. The company sold this kind of service don’t produce phones, they collect all kinds of phones avaliable, in a way, and people fill a few forms online, set a monthly price, paid that bill, then they get a new phone.
The good part of such a thing is that people(perhapes nurds, like me, to be exactly), can try different types/different price/different brands/different configuration/different OS of phone. I would be very willing to be th first client trying a complete new moblie every month just in order to meet the needs of my curiousness for smartphone technology.
I would be very happy to do so, and when I feel no more like to keep that phone, I can return to the company, and they are OK with that because other people would love to try that phone, too.
I am not sure if this service can work. But thinking about dress and phone, they do have some common points.
Clothes is, like phone, be particular about the time, because clothes needs to be popular with fashion.
So does smartphone.
A smartphone tends to be eliminated by comsumers at a reduced price after being on sale for a peroid of time. Woman buy one skirt, dress that once for a party, and then never dress it again. Man buy one smartphone, or other advant technology product, using for a couple of weeks, and get tired of , and love to have a different one.
share economy helps by reducing the waste of technology products. subcribe-rental model is the perfect solution to carry out the share economy task when it steps into technology products.
Of course, there are some very difficult problems it have to face. for example, people don’t care much about second-hand clothes, but smartphone depends on advance technology, which owns a much higher Elimination Rate than clothes.
Another problem may be data inside smartphone. You have to reset your personal data ( pictures/ music/ address book, even your favorite desktop screen background image), but that problem can be solved through the development of cloud storage solution.
