By Timothy J. McClain

Self-described gadget nut Will Newburn is a wireless telephone user from way back. "I used to have one of those mobile phones in the car," recalls the Tom Hom Group president. "The thing was as huge as a cinder block. It cost about $2,000 and had a huge antenna, about 45 inches long - they had to drill a hole in the trunk. You would pick up the handset to make a call and wait for a 'clear' sign. Then you'd get an operator and give her the number."

As the phones got better, Newburn kept trading up. Today he's among a growing legion of executives who factor form as well as function into their wireless purchasing plans. A year ago Newburn eagerly shelled out more than $500 for Motorola's sleek StarTac - "When I saw it coming out I let GTE (his carrier) know I wanted one," he recalls. When the price recently dropped to under $200, he bought three more so his office mates also could be so stylishly equipped.

With engineering advances shrinking the size of a phone's guts, and with more companies offering products for sale, manufacturers are devoting greater attention to design. In the cellular phone industry, Motorola has been the design leader. It showed the world how to "flip" and then made a palm-sized phone with its StarTac. Now everyone else - Nokia, Samsung, Qualcomm, Sony, Ericsson, etc. - is very much in the game. For example, Qualcomm's Q-Phone is expected to post sizzling holiday season sales, Sony's shrinking the size of its products with "Walkman"-like efficiency while Ericsson's sophisticated lines and colors have its top-of-the line products looking right at home in a luxury car.

Demographics And Geographics

 As the market segments, designers say they're starting to customize their works along demographic and geographic lines. "In Asia they prefer phones that have a lot of buttons for a lot of purposes," says Heidi Lax, Nokia Inc.'s GSM 1900 product manager. "Europe wants a lot of clean-looking telephones." In South America flip phones are most popular, says Gina Lombardi, Qualcomm's vice president of products in the subscriber products division.

Who will use the phone is so important now that David Townsend, manager of industrial design for Ericsson, says it's one of the first questions he asks before moving ahead with a new design. "We have to have some direction," Townsend says. "Are we talking about a phone for executives in the Far East, a phone to market in Europe or one to market to teen-agers in Latin America? Once we know that we can go in and start to work on the cosmetics."

Along with the shape of the phone, cosmetics include items such as the size of the display, the number of buttons and how they should be labeled. Such considerations weren't even part of the design equation a decade ago. "When the industry got started it was just a phone," Townsend recalls. "I was working at Motorola and we called it the 'brick phone.' We were getting this thing out and people were buying it."

Now design teams turn to focus groups, talk to users and interview carriers. Wireless phones today must do more than simply work. Consumers are judging them on the same standards as other electronic appliances, meaning they must look good and be intuitive to use. "Everyone throws away the manual and starts playing with the phone," notes Peter Skarzynski, vice president of marketing for Samsung.

Color vs. Black And White

Phone designers like colors - hey, they're artists. But they are not in agreement as to whether the market is large enough for manufactures to make a corresponding investment.

"Colors are coming on big, and should follow the trends," says Nokia's Lax. "We have a design center in Los Angeles and they are looking at colors for all our of new phones these days." Nokia's 2190, for example, comes in wood grain, red and blue. "It is really a lifestyle thing," Lax says. "We are going away from black." Ericsson, too, is following this route, looking more at sophisticated rich, dark colors for its top-of-the-line phones and vibrant, bright colors for those aimed at teen-agers.

Others are more color cautious.

"We have done some colors for a lot of our customers," says Qualcomm's Lombardi. "Colors are nice and flashy, but they don't sell well. Black and gray are the colors that people really want."

"The studies we have done on color are pretty interesting," says Samsung's Skarzynski. "It still comes back that the majority of the people like black phones with that high-tech image. But we are working with some consultants on types of designs and colors that people like. We are trailing them right now with our carrier. I think as a trend, you will probably see
more phones that have different colors that appeal to different segments of the market."

"Colors are gaining some acceptance," says Roger Berg, director of engineering for Sony Wireless Telecommunications Co. in San Diego. "In the past it has kind of been like a Model T: 'I'll give you any color as long as it's black.' ... In some sectors we see where color or other design elements are preferred. But the traditional business person whose company pays the cellular bill still wants the conservative black."

Dismissive of any design reasoning for the allegiance to black is Vladymir Rogov, owner of Rogov International Design in Sorrento Mesa. "The reason black is so ubiquitous is it doesn't require any extra steps," he says. "You just mold it in one color."

Gadget nut and executive Will Newburn talks on his StarTac, above, and, at right, compares the sleek phone to one of his first wireless purchases.

Ear-To-Mouth Ratio

Modality is the term phone designers use when talking about how inherently "right" it feels when a person puts a phone against their face and makes a call. As portables become smaller than the land-line handset in the,average household, a lot of effort goes into achieving the right proportions.

"If you have a short phone, people tend to move the phone from the ear to the mouth as they speak and listen," says Nokia's Lax. "It is a human thing to do. So an extension or some kind of cover is preferred."

Qualcomm's Lombardi agrees. "People tend to like to know that there is something they are talking into. (But) you really don't need to have (a microphone) at your mouth to get the same quality of sound," she says.

During focus groups and interviews with customers and potential customers, it became clear to Samsung that a comfortable fit was important, says Peter Skarzynski, vice president of marketing. "When people try to talk on small phones, they want something to talk into," Skarzynski says. "We found that (ear-to-mouth) dimension was very important... Ear seal itself is very important. People want to find a spot to put their ear."

How Small Is Too Small?

We can't yet wear a phone clipped to our shirt à la Star Trek, nor have engineers come up with a receiver and microphone combo small enough to clip to an ear. But it's getting close and leading to a whole new set of challenges.

"We are at the stick-it-in-your-pocket stage," says Ericsson's Townsend. "You start getting much smaller and you can't read the display or punch buttons. Over in Tokyo if you watch the businessmen talking (with the phones) on the street and on the bus, you know why they want this stuff so small. They are carrying it all day."

Nokia's Lax says it's important to balance shrinking sizes with what users want. Nokia is convinced customers want a large display that is intuitive to use. The company's 2190 model, for instance, isn't the smallest phone on the market, but it deliberately has, proportionately, one of the biggest displays.

Small sizes aside, wireless phone users still want the device to have some heft. "We have noted that if the phone is too light, users don't really appreciate it," Lax says.

At Qualcomm, Lom-bardi's engineers have standing orders to get the phone down to watch size - not that she believes people would buy it today. "We just haven't really had a demand for that yet," she says, noting the general lack of consumer interest in existing telephone headsets that plug into wireless phones. "People are reluctant to wear headsets. They look funny."

Samsung's Skarzynski notes that in focus groups people gravitate to the smallest phones. "Then you say, 'try to work it,'" he says. "People find they are not necessarily easy to use."

But the designers are working hard to leap that hurdle.

Sony, with its rich history of miniaturization successes, uses a "jog dial," a finger-operated scrolling device that lets customers access features on its phones. In addition, its Z-100 cigarette pack sized phones come with a flip-arm mike that users talk into.

Sony's Berg says there are plenty of buyers for such tiny products. "The gadgetry people who say, 'I want the newest, smallest and lightest,' those kinds of markets exist throughout the world," he says.


The Wireless Design Future

As sexy as designs can be, the designers know that it is the marriage of function and looks that makes for a successful product. So their job will remain to develop the right combination for specific audiences.

"Nowadays we can't say that a high-end phone is a phone with all the features," Nokia's Lax says. "There might be a high-end, highly-featured phone that has a simplified user interface. Maybe it's voice activated. Many of the high-end users want a high-end looking phone, but they only use certain features."

And the neatest and newest features will always drive sales.

"As a parent, how many people are going to want to go off and give their 16-year-old a cellular phone?" asks Ericsson's Townsend. "So maybe you design one where you slide a phone card in that is good for a certain number of calls. Or one that has number programmed in that they can use."

Designer Rogov predicts that improvements in technical features along with reductions in manufacturing costs will trigger an explosion in wireless telephones. Consumers, he says, will own several.

For example, as an evening wear accessory, Rogov envisions an ultra-thin phone with few features that slips easily into a suit pocket or a woman's handbag. Phones for older people would have large buttons and displays while the telephone in the car is voice activated.

"These things will become more and more customized," he says. "If you go into the mountains, you want this rugged thing that looks like a mountain phone. If you have a suit on, you want something that fits inside your pocket that doesn't look like you're packing a .45. It doesn't matter about the phone; it is the occasion that matters.

"For a phone company, there is an opportunity to really look at market segments. What does a rapper's phone look like? What does a 17-year-old girl's phone look like? What does a disposable phone - you load it with, say, $100 worth of calls and when you are done you throw it away - look like? There are opportunities now to address these kinds of things."

And of course there will always be buyers like Will Newburn, ready to snap them up.