My mind sometimes drifts to a different land. The land of mobiles where every new phone comes and kicks the existing phones and along with that the hearts of the people who own them. I dwell amid tech-friendly, gadget loving people. They have amazing knowledge of specifications and what is best for them or for anyone. I stand there in that world as a naive and mute spectator wondering what should I own. No I have a smartphone and I have used to for a year and it is an Android, all is good but when I hear about the 5 inches displays and 13 MP cameras, the 16 GB internal storage or HD display then my smartphone seems an average phone and I seem a fool owning that.
Then my mind interferes, it always does at critical juncture when am about to take a big decision, when am on a brink of jumping to a conclusion or doing something great by my standards. My mind sweetly asks me, ” Why do you need this?”. And then my enthusiasm ends. Why do I need another smartphone? To show off? To tell myself ok now am cool? No I don’t need it. I want it. There is a distinct difference between my needs and my wants, the other day I was convincing someone about the difference. What happened when the ball is in my court? Will I falter? Determination takes over from here and my precious money is saved for say another year.
Mobiles have become diamonds or gold I guess. You may not own a platinum, but if you don’t own a smartphone you are not there. There are changing perceptions and sometimes people are judged by the phones they own. Are phones a necessity or a style statement? Will you look up to a person who in spite of having all the means owns just a feature phone and not a smartphone? This question comes to my mind and I conclude yes somewhat we would judge the person, isn’t it?
Are we gradually getting entangled in a web which has no escape route? The 2012 statistics reveal, for the first time mobile phone sales came down by 1.7% since 2009. It was not because people stopped buying phones, it was because there is dramtic shift from feature phones to smartphones now. Samsung rules the roost by selling smartphones that were 53.5% of total 385 million phones sold while Apple sold 130 million smartphones. The experts believe that in 2013 smartphones will edge over the sales of feature phones. That means we are ready to pay anything around 18k-35K or even more for a phone. Where is this heading? Will India soon figure as a top market for smartphones or it does already? I will not be surprised if it is. Are we actually getting smarter?
