Cool New Cell Phone for Seniors. And Smart Product Development.

A collegue sent me information on a new "Senior Cell Phone" called Jitterbug.

The company GreatCall created Jitterbug to "provide Baby Boomers and their parents with perfectly simple cell phones and services that work the way they want them to".

The company's mission is to "simplify technology and make it available to everyone. Jitterbug's products, services and systems are centered on simplicity, personalization and ease of use".

The company was founded by Arlene Harris (45-year veteran in wireless and creator of the SOS emergency phone) and Martin Cooper ("Father of the first mobile cellular phone.").

This is a great idea. I remember shopping for a cell phone for my aging mom a few years back and could not find anything even close to user friendly at Verizon Wireless or any other major wireless company.

Case and point. The results for a  Google search (today) for "Verizon cell phone senior"  mostly returns information on Verizon "calling plans"  for seniors.  This confirms how the folks at Verizon think - it's not about the product, it's about the calling plan.  And for most cell phone users this is correct - the products are all pretty much all the same - shoppers are really buying calling plans. But the senior care market is different.   The only user-friendly senior cell phone in the search results is the Jitterbug phone.

Kudos to GreatCall for developing such a phone.  This is a great example of a company who undertands our country's demographics and their needs. 

By the way, an interesting and related blog post our readers may find interesting is Sony confirms that they are tuned out.  Not to pick on Sony but this blog post offers some interesting perspectives on "identifying new products that consumers actually want ."  

Comments

[huyer]

Does jitterbug really work? i've seen these commercials and the phones look a little ghetto...

www.yourseniorcare.com
Your Senior Care

[Cellular phones for sale]

That new cell phones was really a big help for the senior for them to have an easy communication with their other relatives. Wish I can have that Jitterbug for my grandfather.

-seff-