Brian Carkhuff makes a living pushing cell phones with the ever-personal touch. He works at a T-Mobile kiosk, clocking in about 60 hours a week, in the ground floor of the Pentagon City mall.
"Folks are willing to pay good money to put their favorite music and favorite photos on their favorite cell phones," says the 37-year-old, who can sell you pretty much whatever you're looking for. Motorola A630, which looks like a mini-BlackBerry, with instant messaging and e-mail capability, goes for about $300 list price. The Samsung P735, a flip phone with an MP3 player, sells for about $500.
Cell phone ring tones and graphics will ring up nearly $500 million this year.
(Diane Bondareff -- Bloomberg News)
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Carkhuff has switched his own phone no less than 10 times in the past five years. He considers his current, clear-cased cell phone -- a Nokia 6600, retail price $399 -- a prized necessity. The phone, which he wears on his belt, takes up to 30 minutes of video clips and has a camera. Its screen saver is a photo of his daughters, 14-year-old Jordyn and 12-year-old Erin, in a pool at his parents' house.
He's got ring tones, too, of course, more than 20, which he buys online at $1.99 each, and they're sent to his phone within 15 to 20 seconds.
"Between the Sheets," by the Isley Brothers, plays when his girlfriend of six months calls; "Devil Went Down to Georgia," by the Charlie Daniels Band, plays when his supervisor calls. The rest of the callers, friends or not, bring up "Lean Back" by Terror Squad.
"That way, when the phone rings, I know who's calling. If the person isn't important -- you know, if I just hear 'Lean Back' -- then I won't necessarily pick it up. But when ringback ring tones come, I'll probably change the song that my supervisor will hear," says Carkhuff, standing behind the kiosk.
Tyler Shulman, hanging with friends at Saki, the ultra-chic sushi bar/club in Adams Morgan where cell phones and cocktails rested side-by-side on tables, paid nearly $350 for his Sanyo VM4500. "It's the whole package," says the 27-year-old events planner. Indeed it is. He especially likes this feature: He sends pictures, taken with the phone's digital camera, to his parents in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., sometimes with an attached voice message or a text message.
He has 13 ring tones; "Toxic," from Britney Spears, plays when his girlfriend, Lauren, calls. "Why just have a normal phone, anyway?" he says.
A few doors down in Tryst, a popular coffeehouse, Amitava Mitra laments the nine months he had to endure the embarrassment of carrying his "ghetto cell phone" -- a Samsung, nothing too fancy -- to daily meetings. He's a lobbyist for Starpond, a technological firm. "It's like bringing a cup of McDonald's coffee with you," says Mitra, 35. "You place that phone on a conference table and people think you're definitely not cool, you don't have style."
So, on Tuesday, he bought a T-Mobile 7100t, a cell phone and BlackBerry in one, for $199. It doesn't have a camera, but it has all the other bells and whistles.
