INQ chief executive officer Frank Meehan has some words of advice for Android manufacturers. Instead of focusing on specs and “elite early adopter customers”, start thinking about what the cool kids want. In an no holds barred interview with Mashable at MWC 2011, the CEO explains why the INQ Cloud Touch is built for success despite having a meager 600 MHz processor.
Frank Meehan isn’t interested in making friends with fellow Android manufacturers. Instead, he believes in delivering the cold hard truth.
“Android manufacturers are all just focused utterly on the tech, because they’re all hardware guys,” he says. “They don’t get software. They’ve tried to outdo Apple with hardware, but the problem is the customer doesn’t care. The Samsung Galaxy has done pretty well, but it’s just price-driven. It’s not desire-driven. There are no lines out the door to get a Galaxy. They’ve done all this work on branding, but the name doesn’t mean anything to consumers. It’s like calling a phone ‘Alpha Centauri’ or ‘Uranus.” – Frank Meehan
The INQ Cloud Touch, HTC Salsa and HTC ChaCha will be the first of dozens of Facebook phones released in 2011. While Mr. Meehan likes what HTC is doing, he thinks that only adding a Facebook button to a keyboard is insufficient.
“Android is fantastic, it’s a brilliant tool,” he says. “But most people here think it’s about mucking about inside the Android code, but it’s nothing to do with that. You’ve got to do better experiences with the tools you get. What can you do better for the customer? Give me something useful.”
The interview really takes a spin for the worse when he begins to praise Apple:
“Every time CES and MWC come around, they’re all sitting there slapping each other on the back,” he says. “Then out comes the iPad, and people are like, ‘Oh sh*t, we got to redo our product roadmap.’ Half the stuff disappears off the roadmap like that.” The iPad 2 and iPhone 5 will have the same effect, he predicts.
Now that you’ve heard Frank Meehan’s opinion about the current state of Android. What do you think about his analysis? Android manufacturers certainly set the bar in terms of smartphone benchmarks and innovation, but is this a bad thing?
via Mashable
