Gartner Research ‘Analyst’ Tole Hart Is a Moron

At the end of a BusinessWeek article on the problems Motorola is having finding carriers willing to embrace their as-yet-still-vaporware iTunes-enabled phone (gist of article: the carriers don’t want you to be able to load the music you already own on your phone; they’re drunk on the gazillions they’re currently raking in selling “ring tones” for a few bucks a pop; thus they want you to buy an entirely different library of music just for your cell phone) we’re treated to the following gem of a quote from “analyst” Tole Hart:

“Who wants the $500 iPod phone when you could buy a phone and an iPod for that much?” says analyst Tole Hart of researcher Gartner.

Uh, hello? How about anyone who didn’t want to carry both a phone and an iPod? And, even dumber, it is not an “iPod” phone. It is a Motorola-branded phone that works with iTunes. There’s a big difference. If there were such a thing as an iPod phone, they could sell for more than $500.

Why do reporters continue to quote these morons?

★ Sunday, 3 April 2005