Sev­eral years ago IDC pre­sented a seg­men­ta­tion model for mobile device users that included a clus­ter called “min­i­mal­ists.” Min­i­mal­ists rou­tinely use tech­nol­ogy-based prod­ucts for home and work, but want prod­ucts with­out com­plex­ity or unnec­es­sary fea­tures. Min­i­mal­ists want a phone to be a phone — not a cam­era, game con­sole or FM radio. They want a com­puter to start up in sec­onds flat, run with­out viruses or user-account-con­trol inter­rup­tions. They don’t want to have to read the own­er’s man­ual before dri­ving a new car off the deal­er’s lot.

Prod­uct devel­op­ers suf­fer­ing from “fea­ture-itis” and min­i­mal­ists are poles apart in what they value. Any­one who has upgraded across mul­ti­ple gen­er­a­tions of soft­ware has prob­a­bly fallen vic­tim to “bloat­ware,” the usual con­se­quence of a devel­oper team that suf­fers from “fea­ture-itis.” Because it’s expen­sive to explore what cus­tomers really want, or would really use, in any mean­ing­ful way, it’s so much sim­pler for prod­uct teams to engage in fea­ture wars with their arch rivals. Hence, bloat­ware.

Minimalists — A Neglected Opportunity?

From my POV as a con­sumer, it’s clear that most tech­nol­ogy brands have cho­sen to over­look the oppor­tu­nity rep­re­sented by “min­i­mal­ists” as poten­tial cus­tomers. When I refer to “tech­nol­ogy brands,” I’m not just think­ing of the com­puter or Inter­net sec­tors, but also con­sumer elec­tron­ics, home appli­ances, cars, etc.

As I recall, min­i­mal­ists (as revealed by IDC’s research) tend to be older adults, prob­a­bly lead­ing-edge Boomers, afflu­ent, well edu­cated, often in the empty-nest phase of life. More than a few have sec­ond homes, have money to spend on travel and leisure activ­i­ties. And yes, they buy and use mul­ti­ple cat­e­gories of tech­nol­ogy prod­ucts, from microwaves to mobile phones, com­put­ers, and home enter­tain­ment devices.

But when a min­i­mal­ist goes shop­ping, she is likely to be con­fronted by a morass of con­fus­ingly named prod­ucts, with lit­tle appar­ent dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, and way too many unnec­es­sary fea­tures. This chal­lenge occurs in many prod­uct cat­e­gories, includ­ing home appli­ances, but is all too preva­lent in tech­nol­ogy brands.

Worst of all, you have to pay for those unwanted fea­tures that are bun­dled into the prod­uct. Have you ever tried to nego­ti­ate with a car dealer to drop the price based on all the fea­tures that you did­n’t want in the car? I tried, and got only a laugh.

My most recent expe­ri­ence has been try­ing to buy a cell phone for my hus­band. He wants a phone with superla­tive voice qual­ity, long bat­tery life, large back­lit keys, clamshell form fac­tor — and no cam­era, FM radio, email/IM/SMS or other mes­sag­ing fea­tures. He uses a Black­Jack for work, and in his per­sonal life, wants a sim­ple phone to bring along when he hikes, bikes or kayaks. Oh, and a price below $100. Need­less to say, this is not the kind of device that today’s lead­ing wire­less car­ri­ers want to pro­mote. Back I go to craigslist…