Wednesday, February 11, 2009

HANDPHONE FEVER!




I read with amusement the other day about the survey done about handphone users in Malaysia. Do you know that there are more handphones that are being used in Malaysia than its population? Which means there are more than 27 million handphones being used currently and some of you guys are holding more than one handphones! Extraordinary! No wonder the telco companies are laughing their way to the bank! Imagine, more than 30 million smses circulating all over the country per day. If we calculate 1 sen per sms sent, it is a whopping RM300,000 everyday, vanished into thin air (to the pockets of telcos, of course). And I am not counting the pre paid fellas (like me) who paid more for smsing.

I remember reading about a country which was brought down by smses alone. The Phillipines government that day was brought down by people smsing each other to rebel against the ruling party. And many rumours sprouted like wildfire through this unseen wave in the sky. And Barack Obama fought like a child to keep his blackberry handphone while serving now as the President of the United States so that he could sms his close friends.

Why can't we live without handphones?

I believe today we are the moving generation and we love to go places. We don't like so much staying home for long. My wife sometimes tells me that our house is like a hotel where we come back to sleep and that's about all. We are moving so much that without a handphone to me is an unimaginable nightmare (unless I don't want anyone to disturb me). AirAsia gets everyone's flying and they make handphones even more precious. Those days, you call me at home and you bound to get me. Today, I don't even have a house phone.

In the future, you don’t need to be a prophet to know that computers will shrink into handphone size so that we can do our work while we are on the move. For some companies, they don’t even need to rent office because their workers work everywhere they like. Of course with a tiny computer in their palms.

When that day comes, I hope we don’t have to pay for smses anymore. It would be taken care of by high speed Internet to our handphone sized computer, with a very low cost per month subscription.

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