With the release of the Porsche Design P’9981, it marked the start of the collaboration of Research In Motion with Porsche Design a subsidary of Porsche. Built with a unique exterior including a forged stainless steel frame, hand-wrapped leather back cover, sculpted QWERTY keyboard, and crystal clear touch display. Costing a whopping us$2000 or sgd$2800, the phone is already sold out in the USA, and over 200 preorders for Singapore, is it not obvious that the exclusivity is very attractive?Its not the first luxury device. There was the Nokia’s Oro as well as Vertu line up of devices, there’s also a few French brands making such luxury devices.
One of the more high profile news of the BlackBerry Porsche device, was when a picture of Beyonce Knowles holding one of these device on the streets of Manhattan was released. This was a gift from Kanye West.
Back in 2006, Rolex apparently paid Tennis star Roger Federer a rumoured $15 million. Now, Kim Kardashian makes more than $10,000 to simply mention a product to her Twitter followers.
RIM themself paid Irish rockers U2 between seven and fifteen-million to hawk the BlackBerry in 2009.
The cost for pictures of Beyonce walking through New York on a sunny afternoon proudly sporting a BlackBerry? Probably zero.
Now, if you remembered, RIM, just hired a new Chief Marketing Officer not long ago. From this, we should, and he should especially take note that exclusivity is bigger today than it has ever been. Everybody wants to be different; who wants to be the same?
Apparently this device was sought after by celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Jay-Z. Hence, RIM should note that, Hollywood needs to find new and expensive ways to drape a virtual velvet rope around itself and charge admission to get inside. It’s likely more than a few of those young stars were among the few who downloaded the infamous “I Am Rich” app; a $1000 app available for the iPhone which was simply a glowing red light with the name of the app scrolling past. Eight people; six from the US, one from Germany and one from France downloaded the app in the first twenty-four hours. I also remember RIM had an insanely expensive application sometime ago in the AppWorld which was also pretty much useless and affluent BlackBerry Fans such as Kevin from CrackBerry bought it.
Apart from the Porsche Design P9981, the was also a rumoured collaboration with Ferrari to come out with a Ferrari-designed BlackBerry Bold 9700. Not as heavily publicized or sold like the P’9981, most of us probably never heard of it.
What perhaps set this device apart from the competition is that it is a highly usable, consumer&business friendly device that has been seen as a solid brand. Perhaps RIM should partner with Chanel or LV or another luxury brand, have the device well encased in precious jewels, minerals. A sapphire coated screen for scratch resistance, a diamond or gold plated keyboard, pure real handcrafted leather battery door, running similarly to a commercial device (in P’9981 case was Bold 9900/9930); priced at us$50,000, it would be one mean device for the elites.
Via Cantechletter
