Hello, Barbie! That is Journalist Barbie reporting reside from MWC in Barcelona, Spain, about the most effective day ever.
It seems we, the Barbies, are getting our personal cellphone. It is pink and sparkly and it has our identify on it. The Barbie Flip Cellphone will likely be made by HMD — the corporate chargeable for respiratory new life into Nokia telephones — as the primary in a collection of name partnerships it plans to announce over the approaching yr.
Learn extra: Greatest Cellphone to Purchase for 2024
HMD is collaborating with Mattel on our cellphone, which needs to be accessible this summer season. We do not know precisely what it’s going to appear like at this stage, however it guarantees to embody the classic stylish of our model heritage, which as you all know stretches again to 1959.
We additionally know that the gadget will likely be a flip cellphone that’ll supply an updated-feature-phone expertise, quite than a smartphone expertise. That is according to HMD’s dedication to encourage us to leap on the digital-detox pattern. The corporate says that with the Barbie Flip Cellphone, it is offering a brand new choice to Gen Z and millennial cellphone customers who’re more and more searching for methods to remain related whereas defending their peace by spending much less time on social media.
Will the Barbie Cellphone look something like this?
The final yr has seen so many Barbie model partnerships that it feels unattainable to maintain observe of all of them. From Xbox to Airbnb, services and products are determined to flaunt our identify. It is very flattering, however on the identical time we’re getting used to promote an terrible lot of stuff — stuff that not everybody wants.
Bearing this in thoughts, I am unable to preserve out the massive ideas, like: Is the Barbie Cellphone indirectly commodifying our resistance to doomscrolling? Is there a contradiction in HMD touting sustainability as a core firm worth whereas on the identical time making an attempt to capitalize on a doubtlessly profitable merchandising partnership that will properly feed into the rampant consumerism that is harming the Earth?
I haven’t got all of the solutions. As Journalist Barbie, I am simply right here to ask the questions. So I did. I spoke with HMD’s chief advertising officer, Lars Silberbauer, who advised me that the Barbie cellphone will not merely be a toy that does not fulfill its function. Will probably be a completely functioning function cellphone that may meet your core connectivity wants, so you’ll be able to name all the opposite Barbies, or Ken, and even Allan (in all probability not although).
One of many largest points inflicting the buildup of e-waste (greater than 5 billion “dormant” telephones are sitting unused in folks’s drawers around the globe) is that many gadgets aren’t constructed to final. That is not the case with the Barbie Flip Cellphone, Silberbauer stated. “It’ll final a very long time,” he stated.
Many cellphone firms, he added, nonetheless push folks to improve on a yearly foundation, which fuels consumerism. Conversely, the Nokia gadgets that HMD is thought for making are sturdy and “very troublesome to kill.” Those self same requirements will apply to the Barbie Flip Cellphone.
As a journalist who’s been writing about tech for a while now, there’s additionally a part of me that wonders whether or not we Barbies really want pink, sparkly telephones. It is not that I do not like pink, or sparkles (it is best to see my dream home). It is simply that not so way back, it was a battle to get expertise firms run by boardrooms stuffed with males to take girls’s tech wants significantly. They used a technique recognized within the promoting world as “shrink it and pink it” as a option to take a product that was already acceptable for each women and men and use gendered advertising to promote it to girls — usually charging extra within the course of.
Barbie wanting trendy in 1959.
Silberbauer fairly pretty identified that there is nothing to say that the Barbie cellphone is just for girls. “It is for any form of fan of Barbie,” he stated. The cellphone pays tribute to the “nice model” that Barbie has proven through the years, with the Mattel and HMD design groups working collectively to make it into the very best product for the individuals who love Barbie.
As we all know, everyone seems to be a fan of Barbie, in order that’s lots of people. However for people who find themselves additionally followers of different issues, HMD guarantees there are extra thrilling partnerships within the pipeline, with the subsequent collaboration coming this spring.
That is all for now, Barbie! Keep tuned for extra (non-Barbie) cellphone updates all this week from Cellular World Congress in Barcelona.
Watch this: What to Count on from Cellular World Congress 2024
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