Why mobile in the UK is like that scene in the Life of Brian
I think, at least in the United Kindom, we’re still very much at that stage in the movie, the Life of Brian, where the Peoples’ Front of Judea ask “What have the Romans ever given us?”
The underlying assumption is that the Romans are rubbish. Until each of the ‘Front’ members pop-up with suggestions unhelpful to the broad argument, like the aqueduct, sanitation, roads, irrigation, medicine, education…
That’s how I felt the other day when I was standing amongst a group of friends of friends.
“What kind of new phone should I get?” a girl asked.
I did a quick analysis in my head and said, “iPhone”. I reasoned that she’d enjoy the interface, she’d love the apps, the maps, the user-interface — and that it would really blow her Nokia-N95-bearing-mind. And it’d be a good experience for her.
For me, for tech geeks, the iPhone’s almost Fisher-Price-like lack of background processing begins to annoy pretty quickly.
“Hold on a moment, that’s a monopoly!” declared a chap next to her.
The conversational attention moved to him as he ranted at the ‘grip’ wielded by Apple and their exclusive operators.
“Right, but the features, the potential, what you can actually DO with the device, it’s brilliant,” I argued, my underling point being that the device would actually increase the girl’s quality of life, in a small yet meaningful manner.
“All I need is to be able to call and text,” said the girl.
Somewhere, a pretty little mobile industry angel popped out of existence.
“Precisely!” said the monopoly chap, “It’s a monopoly!”
“Apple needed to do a deal with the mobile operators to get them to accept and implement ‘unlimited’ mobile data,” I explained, “Plus they needed to be able to install some software/services to deliver visual voicemail at the operator level, hence the initial exclusivity.”
The argument continued.
Before somebody mentioned ‘TomTom’ and the girl picked up, “Oh, maps on my mobile would be good.”
And almost immediately — exactly as per the script of the Life of Brian, everybody listening into the conversation started listing benefits of the iPhone. (Or, benefits of an advanced mobile platform, over and above the call/text basics).
Maps.
Sending pictures easily.
Train times.
Cocktail instructions. (Another chap promptly got out his iPhone, downloaded a cocktail video app and proceeded to follow the instructions to make a Caprina).
Here’s a video of that Life of Brian scene I found on YouTube:
To end the conversation, before we got onto more interesting discussion themes, I gave an illustration to how I’d used my mobile that day.
1. Alarm clock in the morning
2. Check train times
3. Find Thorntons chocolate shop in the High Street
4. See where my friend was, currently, with Google Latitude and rendezvous
5. Deal with some technical support perspective from a colleague via Facebook
6. Use the National Rail Enquiries iPhone app (priced at a steep £4.99) to ‘Find my next train home’ — a genius, genius offer.
7. Looked up and ordered a book on Amazon
8. Watched three episodes of The Wire
9. Listened to 60 minutes of Terry Pratchett’s Making Money audiobook
10. Took a photo and blogged about the fact that you can get an Entire Wedding Day Package for £1,799 at a venue in Billericay (walked by the poster).
At the end of my list, the chap didn’t say much for a few moments, before affirming that he, “Only wants to call and text on his mobile.”
Which is perfectly fine.
But the girl in question — and a few other on-lookers were sold. And they’ll be heading out to buy iPhones shortly.
The Great Unwashed — the mobile masses — are slowly realising that they don’t just need to restricted themselves to calling and texting.
There’s actually a lot more you can do with your handset…
