Expert Views | Rajen Varada

 
Future in your hands
 
Direct marketing will evolve to individual marketing as companies will start profiling mobile users as they start using their mobiles for online access and mobile purchases.
 
This is literally true today with the proliferation of mobile phones to almost every corner of this country. If there are spaces still outside range, it is only a matter of time before the mobile footprint—like the footprint of Vanama—covers all the space of this country. Mobile phones have done to India what the constitution promised to do. A secular mobile country! Almost everybody has one, or will have in the future. Has it empowered us or has technology enslaved us? I have seen a legless beggar sitting on a wheeled cart in Himayatnager crossing, Hyderabad, talking on a mobile. Why does he need it? The answer is blowing in the air waves.
What’s next? For a country that just cannot stop talking, the mobile phone is truly manna from heaven. But is it all that it is going to be? From single SIM phones to dual to triple SIMs, what will the future bring, what will the users of tomorrow expect? More importantly, what will they contribute? Or, will it all be only yakking in dual and triple?
 
The fascination with mobile phones is an unprecedented event in the ICT history of this country of ancient origin and culture. Many sociologists and development agencies cry with dismay: we have more cell phones than toilets. That, they say, shows India’s development is lopsided. I think such complainers absolutely miss the very essence of India and what Bharat has always lived like. India has always lived in various layers and with acceptance of the fact that we have the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor. We are the world’s largest democracy, yet we are chaotic. We have RTI but we are also corrupt. We have Gandhi, yet several of his principles have never been applied. We have all possible religions, castes and ethnicity and yet we are one country. So, we may continue to defecate in open and merrily enjoy mobiles and connectivity.
 
Let us consider, then, what will the future use be. Of course we will be flooded with commercial content and manipulated by future advertising companies targeting specific individual users, as they fine-tune their strategies to track user trends and take advantage of larger bandwidths. Direct marketing will evolve to individual marketing: companies will start profiling mobile users as they start using their mobiles for online access and mobile purchases. The mobile economy will see a new breed of banking and debt collectors. That is what I foresee in the immediate future.
 
Local language content will grow and, as more specific markets are targeted; marginalized communities will come online and becomes part of the mobile internet economy. The internet in India will become “mobinet”, as mobile-based internet will be available in tier-2 and -3 towns and other remote areas.
The mobile phone will become the most important real estate to have for every citizen in this country. It will provide access to all e-services and all kind of content as a converged tool. It will increase the number of deaf people in this country and, maybe, even start changing the way we hear; the shape of our ears in the distant future may evolve to be more suited to accommodate a mobile phone. Who knows, future mobiles may even be implanted in the space between the ears, which most people don’t use anyway. Who needs a brain when you have a cell phone?
 
But what about those geniuses who want to use the mobile for more than just talking or paying bills online?
I suspect we will see the same kind of movement as we see on the internet. The mobile will become the conduit for sharing knowledge and, as it becomes the great equalizer, it will continue to connect people. As use becomes common, people will use it for greater goals and apply its use to many walks of life.
Hopefully, the talking will not simply be yakking but will evolve to knowledge sharing, citizen governance and co-creation of content: with mobile Babel fish embedded in each device, there will no longer be a language divide.
 
In the end, the prime tourist spaces will be those where no mobile can reach. But where will they be?
 
Rajen Varada
Founder, Technology for the people
 

Leave Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

clear formSubmit