FEB 22 — Seven years ago, I was the only Malaysian journalist who attended a little-known conference, which was thronged by industry professionals in the mobile communications arena.
Set in the Palais des Festival in the southern French Riviera city of Cannes, the largest industry extravaganza was called the GSM World Congress.
In 2005, it evolved into what is known as the 3GSM World Congress in reference to the ascendency of 3G wireless technologies.
By 2006, the conference was renamed the Mobile World Congress (MWC) and the venue shifted from Cannes to the coastal town of Barcelona, in the Cataluña province of Spain to accommodate more participants to the conference.
I remember covering the event back then but never remembered it to be that widely publicised, let alone that sexy in nature. All I did remember was hardcore technical conferences were held one after another and exhibition halls filled with high-tech network gizmos that were connected to servers, antennas, and computer screens — hardly attractive at all for the average Joe.
But in the latest iteration of the MWC concluded last week, what a different story it was. Hundreds of news items poured out from the Net, many of which centred on the consumer side of mobile communications instead of network devices, wireless jargon and technologies.
Big-ticket items included a huge focus on the latest sexy mobile devices, including smartphones and tablet computing, and a lot of software, services and applications.
Although two infocomm technology (ICT) giants — Nokia and Microsoft — grabbed some of the headlines with their announcement of a tie-up a few days before the MWC officially kicked off, much of the spotlight at MWC was dominated by Google Android’s rule as the new king of smartphone operating systems.
As noted by Brighthand, a smartphone news portal, this was the first time in MWC history that there was no premiere of a device with Symbian OS, Windows Phone, BlackBerry OS or any other platform that is not Android. Led by the likes of Samsung, HTC and Sony Ericsson, Android was the poster child for all great smartphones launched.
Samsung displayed its successor to its Galaxy S, dubbed the Galaxy S II, while Taiwan’s HTC launched five new Android-based phones, including two models that come with a dedicated Facebook button, which enables its users to access the social networking site merely with a single keystroke.
Meanwhile, Sony Ericsson launched the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, a phone-cum-PlayStation Portable gaming phone targeted at the young, while LG threw in its lot by announcing its Optimus 3D, a 4.3-inch three-dimensional smartphone.
On the tablet front, Samsung presented its Galaxy 10.1-inch, tablet-optimised Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) OS weighing in at a mere 560 grams, noticeably lighter than Apple’s iPad and Motorola’s Xoom.
Not wanting to miss out were fellow Koreans, LG, which presented the LG Slate/Optimus Pad, while HTC introduced its 7-inch tablet, dubbed Flyer, that will be paired with a pressure-sensitive stylus which will allow pen-like input.
While this is certainly not an exhaustive list of announcements made, this year’s MWC is certainly more skewed towards the consumer side of mobile rather than being focused on the network side, which was traditionally the case.
Industry analysts call this phenomenon the “consumerisation” of ICT, something that is taking the world by storm, and for good reason too. Much of the focus of mobile communications in these past few years, and by extension these trade conferences, have centred on how fast networks are capable of performing and the technologies that are going to take us there.
But in the past two years, led by the likes of Apple, Google and the Facebooks of the world, the world has somewhat changed. No longer do vendors and service providers control what kind of content and services consumers ought to receive. Instead, the tables have been turned and consumers get to decide what they want and how they want it.
This gives the idea that consumers are in the driver’s seat of the kind of applications and services they want to consume and that service providers and vendors would have no choice but to bend over backwards to meet consumer demand.
The game has certainly changed and consumers today are being moulded by these so-called Web 2.0 companies to think about how technology should be consumed.
But are these developments necessarily a good thing?
While some of it may seem like a blessing in disguise, it also does beg the question as to whether we are too hooked to the technology and devices that these companies supposedly empower us with.
After all, if you think about it, in order to consume these modern marvels, you would need to acquire these latest devices, download the applications and services, quite a few of which you’ll have to purchase.
Don’t get me wrong as I’m all for technology making life better for us. But what I am saying is that before we surrender our hard-earned money to these companies by committing to buying these latest gizmos and apps, it would do us well to still ask if we truly need what’s being offered and how much we’re prepared to pay to enjoy it.
The consumerisation of IT may seem like a novel and empowering concept. But an antithesis to this would be to ask ourselves if we’re being “colonised” by ICT instead of merely being a consumer of ICT?
As these consumer-centric companies seek to vie for our attention and ringgit, you may want to ask yourself, who really is in the driver’s seat, you or them?
Food for thought indeed.
* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.
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