Mobile Mania

Why is that suddenly everyone is talking about Mobile? Or is it just that my senses have become more receptive to the word – ‘mobile’? Or is it because of the fact that my cellphone doesn’t work 90% of the time, and so friends, colleagues and family members always crib about it.

Whatever be the reason, I am getting more hooked up to the mobile world. Look at the improvement in features available in cellphones in last few years. But are we using the full benefits of the features that the phone provides. Just thinking about the opportunities that exist in this space makes me shiver. The more I explore, the more i find unexplored.

Till few weeks ago, I was the proponent of the belief that a mobile phone shudn’t cost more than a thousand rupees. Coz i seeked the very basic phones, and thought that the best use of a phone was to talk to someone. All the carriers provided SMS, which i rarely used, and found it to be a nuisance. But now looking around, I see the innumerable end-uses of even the basic SMS. Entrepreneurs are crafting innovative ways of using this very basic facility. For instance KoolPool (www.KoolPool.com), http://www.yaari.com and leading all these pack is UnicelTech. Recently met the VP (and founder) of Unicel Vinay Agarrwal (he is the only agarwal with double ‘rr’ in his name). A hyperactive chap who in the half hour discussion I had, talked about atleast 10 different enterprise applications that cud be developed by using just the SMS feature.

Then you have MMS (and I am not talking about the MMS story of teenagers). Mobile phones have now full fledged video streaming capabilities, in built camera, personal computer, and all these in very basic phones. Not to mention what you got in Palm Treo, Blackberry and Motorola Q series.

I think mobile is in the same stages of evolution which internet and PC were a decade ago. And we all know, the volume of business that runs over internet, add to it the number of software and hardware companies. I missed the internet boom, but I shudn’t miss the mobile boom now.