A comic strip I ran across last week wonderfully summed up in a brilliant, understated manner the transformational wireless dynamic in America and the world.
In the first scene, a prehistoric fellow is looking down ho-hum at a dictionary on a boulder. The caption above is “robot.” The next scene is identical, except for the caption. It reads: “a wireless puppet.”
There you have it. Objects and services across the board increasingly are being defined by the absence of wires, even though most things do not have wires in the first place. But a number of products that consumers prize and depend on do-at least to one degree or another. Phones, computers, TVs, stereos and electronic games for starters.
Indeed, there is great value in not being tethered. This is true for adults, as well as for the titanically lucrative tween-teen market.
Indeed, the new National Consumer League survey found more than one-third of adults with landline telephone service said they are likely to cut the cord and use only mobile phones at home in the next two years.
Value is not a concept tweens and teens are apt to have much use for. For them (and all who follow), wireless gadgets are simply life-enhancing enablers. Talking, music, text messaging, gaming, etc., are how life gets done for this free-spirited, money-spending demographic segment. Anything else is lame, and definitely not cool or sexy. Ya’ know?
The up-and-coming generations will start out with mobile phones and grow old with them. Landline phones, desktop computers and clunky hi-fi music gear will be viewed through windows at the Smithsonian.
Wireless technology-exploitingly and capitalizing on the mobilized nature of modern man-always has been The Next Big Thing. But it was far too obvious and apparently not elusive enough to warrant full appreciation for all those in blind search of the one great technological elixir.
What does it all mean? For one thing, profits. Nearly every data point will be measured in the billions-carrier revenues, phone and infrastructure sales, and of course, subscribers worldwide. Cell-phone companies and their future partners will become the pre-eminent corporations of the future.
It also means controversy is here to stay. Consumer and legal squabbles are inherent with any industry whose products and services are so pervasive. Moreover, being big makes you a can’t-miss target for hungry trial lawyers and their ilk.
Some things never change.
