New Bell ads channel Daft Hands, Apple Eater Bites

Along with the launch of Bell’s new advertising campaign, which seems like a mash up of Telus ads and a Daft Punk song, was the launch of their Apple iphone competitor, the Samsung Instinct. Boldly proclaiming it an ‘Apple eater’, and a slew of other adjectives (stunner, sexier, cooler, sleeker, everything-er), Bell is hoping this phone (judging by the amount of billboards and ads plaster around Toronto) will be the handset that turns around their flagging cellular arm.

Early reports however from the popular cell-phone geek website HowardForums, and a review at CTV, have been anything but positive (32 pages of mostly negative comments), suggesting that the Instinct is far from the iphone killer Bell is making it out to be. A post summarizes all the reported issues with the phone, and these range from lack of downloadable programs, no free GPS, poor web browser and an overall lack of features compared to other Smartphones.

Funnily enough, if some of these early adopters had read reviews of the US model, it would have been clear that this phone in many ways hardly matches up to the iphone, or even the 1 year old HTC Touch. Even more frustrating to many of these people is the further crippling of the phone by Bell – no visual voice mail, removal of access to other email accounts, such as Gmail (which is available on the US model), locking it to hotmail only – and this itself costs an extra $8 an month.

Despite the fact that they are still offering a much better data rate (unlimited data/browsing for $10 a month) compared to Roger’s iphone rates it is clear that this is not a true Smartphone (even less though than the iphone), and in actually fact in order bring it up to the level of functionality of any most other Smartphones the additional services (i.e. GPS, email) you have to pay for negate the savings of the data plan. It is clear that Bell is looking to increase their ARUP* to offset lower new subscriber showings.

At the same time as the launch of the Instinct, another handset (that is not plastered everywhere in ads) has been quietly launched, the HTC Touch Dual, an update of the popular HTC Touch, with a vertically sliding keyboard. This very same phone offers all the functionality of the Instinct, without the feature crippling lock outs (being Windows Mobile you can install any application you want, including Google Maps free GPS, and access any email account), and it costs less to boot. I guess since it doesn’t look as cool (and as close to) as the iphone as the Instinct does they aren’t going to bother hyping it. When will Bell ever learn that great marketing isn’t the only key to success – the product has to at least live up to part of the hype. With the Instinct this is clearly not the case, as the CTV article jokes its more of a ‘wallet eater’ than ‘apple eater’.

*ARUP = Average revenue per user, one of the key metrics used to measure a cellphone companies success