You gotta hand it too them

I was shopping today. Big mall, seasonal stock stacked high and a Friday rush. But all the hustle and bustle couldn't stop me noticing just how dialled Apple have got the next generation of physical retail. This become all the more obvious when you see the painfully try-hard attempts of certain competitors to reproduce that cooler-than-cool shopping environment.

I'll single out Virgin*, because they're a company always on the look for the limelight. It's widely accepted the Apple is sexy; sexy in a clean, cool kinda way. White works. Virgin Media try to go sexy with their red and black branding and end up with a look that's a very different sexy. Hot and dirty - and I don't mean either as a complimest. Caustraphobic.

They may be failing but at least they are trying to be this millenium. Woolworths remains firmly rooted in the 70s!

*Virgin's homepage points me to Superbrands, who've named Virgin Atlantic as their 10th coolest brand of 2007. They still lose to Apple and the iPod!

My Magic Phone

The Apple iPhone launched in the UK last night. My wife went down to the local O2 store at 6.02 hoping to collect some promised freebies. They hadn't arrived. Yes they had the iPhone but even the enthusiastic sales assistant couldn't convince her to be excited about it. Her impression was it is big (not in a good way) - and there were no freebies!

Which brings me to my point. Earlier this week I watched some videos from Google. One asked a bunch of young school children what their 'magic phone' would do. There answers were interesting but very different to mine. My 'magic phone' would make and receive calls, surf the internet and show video. Nothing different there. But here's the difference: it would have no usage limits and the phone would cost me nothing. No buying an expensive handset and no monthly payments.

How do you monetise a service like that? I have few ideas but let's not let reality get in the way of a good idea. Just think about how popular it could be!