Technology & Innovation — January 25, 2010

Getting Personal With Your Cell Phone

His name may be Steel (David, that is), but Samsung’s Senior VP of Strategic Marketing for North America is more interested in the warmer, fuzzier side of his company’s products than in the hardcore tech side. Dominating consumer electronics in the coming decade, he explains in his Big Think interview, will mean nurturing the personal connection between users and their gadgets.

Our mobile phone “is the most personal object we all have,” Steel claims. “We can leave home and leave our wallet behind, but if we leave home and we left our phone behind, chances are we’re going to turn around and go back to pick it up.” A more fun and customizable user experience is therefore the future of the phone, as it is the future of TVs and PCs (even if they never merge completely as some believe).

Steel also recounts his rise within Samsung and offers advice to young people entering today’s forbidding business climate.

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7 min

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with

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