Gaming the name

In the O'Shea household, the holidays traditionally have been a time of great chaos and confusion. In the past, that confusion might have been caused by a roving band of drunken Irish relatives who tended to let old emotional wounds fester until a large family gathering.

This past Christmas was much quieter. The only difficult conversation I had was the one with an aged family member who was confused by the two brand names listed on the clamshell cover of my mobile phone. I had a nearly 10-minute conversation with her, trying to explain that the “Samsung” named on the phone was the manufacturer of the device and that the “Verizon” listed just below Samsung was the mobile phone service provider.

She seemed unable to grasp the difference, insisting that Nokia was both the maker and service provider for her own well-worn, brick-sized mobile phone. This got me thinking — when I was able to extricate myself from the conversation — about handset branding.

Over the last few years, wireless carriers really have begun to leverage their influence in the development and marketing of mobile phones. Many years ago, it wouldn't have been surprising to not find a carrier brand listed anywhere on a mobile phone. After all, one company made that phone so that's how the phone was branded. The brands that consumers considered in their buying decisions were Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson and the like, not Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, Sprint and their ilk.

But now, carriers and vendor names often share space on devices, and even that might be changing as carriers are looking to control even more of the mobile ecosystem. If you looked at the new Sidekick device being sold by T-Mobile, you wouldn't know from appearances who the manufacturer is because the only brand on the Sidekick is T-Mobile. Also, Sprint has started selling a phone that displays only the Sprint brand name.

Nothing ever stopped carriers from putting their names on phones before, except perhaps a perception that the handset business was too messy, too technical and too deadline-oriented. Maybe these service providers finally are realizing that some users consider handset brand very important. Carriers also are reinforcing the idea that, even in an age that probably is about to yield an iPod phone, mobile is more about services than device types. Even if that service is music or video content, as it increasingly will become, carriers are affirming that the mobile ecososystem begins and ends at their doorsteps.

But that's not the only thing that's happening. For several years, many major device vendors have been outsourcing some piece of the costly manufacturing process to an emerging crop of original device manufacturers, or ODMs. ODMs — many of them small Asian companies with low overhead and an eagerness for business — were only too happy leave their own labels off the devices. Now, carriers are increasingly looking to work directly with ODMs for reasons that have to do with cost, brand control and influence over device development.

This makes the traditional major handset vendors middlemen that could easily be cut out of the picture if carriers look to further control device development. The major vendors have responded by investing more in the software side of the device business, but in that arena, they are the no-names working in the shadow of major players like Microsoft.

Major device vendors probably can take some solace in the fact that a lot of people still think Nokia, Motorola and Samsung are service providers. My older relative considers herself a Nokia customer before anything else. Too bad she hasn't bought a new phone in seven years.