All I Want for Christmas (or Hanukkah)...
Well, here we are at the end of another, more or less lackluster year for the telecom industry. So much for the prognosticators who swore we'd be back in rare form by Q3, '04.
At the risk of getting yelled at by my readers who don't think I should step outside of the bounds of wireless, I'm going to take a bit of editorial license and maybe a bit of tongue-in-cheek-edness as well.
While the military segment has managed to breathe a bit of life into our industry for the past couple of years, our industry has always boomed when consumer confidence is up and they have disposable income. I've written enough about this so I'm not going to belabor it here, but I need to mention it to reference my discussion.
On the other hand, even when confidence is down and consumers are in a cautionary mood, if they really want something bad enough, they will usually find a way to get it.
With all that is going on globally, the short-term outlook (a year, maybe two) for consumer's regaining confidence doesn't look too bright. And, I'm not hearing a lot of positive vibes as '04 draws to a close. Heck, even I'm not willing to venture a guess this year.
But maybe, if we shaped our ship, we could pry some of those cautionary dollars away from the consumer anyway. I have some ideas, in the way of a wish list for the holidays.
I get flak for getting on the industry for being what I call "almost." What I mean by that is that we tend to push the limits of technology, but somehow always fall a bit short. Trust me, it's not that I don't understand the economic issues. I do. Like most of us, I've sat through a few of those graduate courses from time to time. I just think we too often sacrifice "the right stuff" for compromises solutions and quick times to market. When we finally do have it right, cheap, and functional, the consumer has already formed the opinion that it was never ready for prime time, based upon alpha, beta, and gamma releases. There are a ton of examples in the past ten or so years, but I don't have the space to stage my argument with them. But few would argue with me, or so I would like to think.
Anyway, here's my wish list.
My first holiday "all I want..." is a universal wireless headset with a reasonable physical footprint and decent talk time. I've seen the current Bluetooth offerings and am not impressed. The first time I saw my publisher wearing one, I though I'd met the Borg. And with, at best, five hours of talk time, it would spend most of its time in the charging cradle (while at Electronika, I was shown a technology that would blow BT out of the water in terms of footprint and power usage for this application).
My next list item is reliable WiFi. This drives me nuts. Half of the time I'm in an area that says WiFi here, now, but I can't connect. Others around me can. Other times the situation is reversed. I can, they can't. I can connect at Tarbucks, but not at Peaberry's. I can at the concourse in San Jose, but not in Denver.
Wish number three is a reliable cell phone. I'm tired of saying "can you hear me now?" all of the time. I don't think I've ever had a wireless call that I couldn't tell was wireless (if it managed to complete, at all). And, it would be nice if I could use it overseas (GSM coverage just doesn't cut it in the states, yet).
Finally, I want a CrackBerry. This is one technology that seems to work (at least, from what I can tell by watching my contemporaries) and I want one. It's expensive, but it works and that accounts for its popularity. I'm envious of watching my publisher and our beloved sales hoods doing the CrackBerry Dance every few seconds. And I really want to be able to learn how to "thumb" a message on that microscopic keyboard (I think Lernout and Hauspie has a real window of opportunity here). I too want to be able to stop in the middle of a conversation, develop that blank stare that George Segal does so well in the movie "The Terminal Man" and automatically reach for that all-in-one communicator on my hip — to the exclusion of everything and everyone around me.
So if the great god of technological development should see fit to complete some of these technologies in the coming year, our industry could be on the road to recovery by this time next year. If not, well, likely we'll be singing the same old song 'bout this time next year.
So, that being said, in all sincerity, I wish all of my readers and everyone else a very pleasant holiday season. As we follow the path to the New Year, may the winds of change guide your ship gently into friendly waters. May those waters encourage a plethora of ideas that will take this industry above and beyond everyone's expectations for 2005.
Live long and prosper...
Wireless Design & Development
Advantage Business Media
Rockaway, NJ, 07866
© 2008 Advantage Business Media
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