Gossip

Are you a phone dummy? Can you tell talk from mutter?

Ever wondered why the displays on PDAs and phones in a store look so MUCH better than the real thing?

The obvious reason is so that you'll think the display is wonderful and clear, and you'll buy one. Obvious? Probably, not; because if you think about it, you'll realise that before you actually part with money, you will typically want to look at a working model.

No - the real reason the display items are such obvious fakes is: so that thieves won't steal them. They are fakes, because otherwise, people would think they were working phones, and some would try to take them away - without paying! - can you believe that?

Sniffer came across the following report - from RCR Wireless News - "25,000 Sony Ericsson "dummy" phones stolen from JFK airport" Clearly, they were taken by dummies. Clearly, they won't be able to sell them to anybody except Sony Ericsson phone stores, who don't pay for display items.

The problem is, when they're in their crates on a truck, it's not obvious that they are dummies - the phones, that is. But normally, it's quite important that it's blindingly obvious.

One phone store manager told the Hunky Mouse: "We always leave the till open when we lock the shop up at night. The cost of repairing the till is many times the value of the small change left in it. Same for the phones; we make sure everything in the window is obviously fake."

Some stores actually stick fake displays over the displays of real phones to discourage thieves from trying.

The company said that had the display phones been actual handsets, the loss would be $5 million. Actually, if they don't get the dummies back, the loss will be substantial! - but nowhere near $5 million. More to the point, there won't be 25,000 phones on the market eating into channel sales, and operator revenues.