Mobility & SMS

1999-2000 were the boom-burst times for the IT industry. It was the time when the mobiles started hitting the campuses, though quite costly for we college goers then.

I still remember with my friends discussing the new buzzword SMS, with some disagreeing that mobile phones are crappy with small screens and too few keys to type. Some one in the crowd said, "SMS will fail". And many in the technology market thought the same and have been taken aback by the success of SMS.

I regard mobility and simplicity to be the two key factors for the success of SMS. Everything from just ringtones, wallpapers, dating, news, airplane updates - any other application of internet has moved to this primitive medium called SMS. The days when we are moving into 3-D visualizations, high tech areas such as nano technology, a simple technology (primitive to current standards) has turned into a multi billion dollar industry. This is what is mobility and simplicity really are.

The current world of mobility is just a beginning. Its still novice - it is at its pre internet stage. There is much more for us to see.

Mobility is getting used to people and People are getting used to mobility.

For mobility to succeed in future, it shouldn't forget the basic principles :

- Provide hit and click services (People need services anywhere anytime, one just needs to provide them in a straight forward fashion). I want to buy a TV, give me the price of TV from the local store. Let the server handle all the complexities and give a user, a hit and click service.

- Simple interfaces which everyone can use (let computing come to people rather than people need to take a course to learn).

- Make Mobility rich but not complex.