Wired on Helio

Sky Dayton Gets Mobile

High rates, low tech - when it comes to cell phones, the US is the third world. The trend surfer who started EarthLink wants to sell you a fully loaded device from the wiredest place on the planet. (Think kool, like Korea.)

...Months before anyone at the company started thinking about services, Dayton and his marketing chief tried to define the people who'd use them. The age group was a no-brainer: Young adults were first to adopt text messaging and camera phones, are most likely to pick out their own phones rather than take what they're given at work, and have the most influence over other users. But there are 61 million 18- to 32-year-olds in the US, and they're not all alike. Helio's research company methodically divided them into eight psychographic segments, five of which lacked either the money or the tech savvy to go for what Dayton had in mind. But three groups did fit the profile. There was the growing number of young people who live with their parents for years after college: Redsun dubbed them the "spoil-me" bunch. Then there were the show-offs who like to slap their handset on the table as soon as they sit down: the "see-me" types. And finally, the high-income young professionals hungry for the latest tech: the "feed-me" group. Spoil me, see me, feed me - catchy shorthand for the 3 million souls Helio hopes to sign up by 2010....

Great article if you'd like to read the whole thing: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.03/helio.html?pg=1&topic=helio&topic_set=