Gyaan Sutra On entrepreneurship and technology

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The web will expand indefinitely till it occupied the complete universe. And the rate of growth would always be faster than what people have seen before.

But for the internet to contain everything that surrounds us, it will have to connect to everything it can. It might be the mobile phone, or if you are the sci-fi kind, the chips embedded in your body. But if you look around carefully there are no chips inside you yet, but you do have a cell phone. So where is the next boom going to take us? The Mobile.

It took 40 years before the first internet boom, it took 5 for the next one. Sooner of later, the booms will start converging, overlapping, and then our definitions of the boom will start changing. But I can rant endlessly about something like this. So lets get back to the topic.

The mobile market, they say, is wide open. Mobile search is still in its infancy, so are most of other applications. Java has made a major foray into cellphones, yet the number of people who seem to be obsessed with the phone are still quite low. Of course every teenager is obsessed and runs after the latest model. But that is just because having a mobile is cool, and you can talk to everybody and all. But the point that I am talking about is, have you had people come up to you and say that there is this really cool application for my mobile. This does not happen, at least not in India.

Our telecom industry is booming. And you have to check the figures to visualize how big it has become in just a few years. If you compare the two, in India, the internet has only been a passing craze. The rural ares are untouched, so are many parts of the bigger cities. It is increasing, oh yes, but not at the rate at which mobiles have taken over. But the one thing which hasn’t come up yet, is people getting technically obsessed with cellphones. You know the kind, the ones who tell you about a website that they found, or a new service. Maybe it is because the mobile platform, which is closer to us than the computer, hasnt been properly utilized yet.

So, when you consider the mobile platform, these are the kind of applications that are and will come up in the next few years, taking up from our laptops to our mobiles.

1. Social Networking on the mobile

Okay you say we have it on television already. Thousands send SMS for Indian Idol, even though it’s such a stupid show. But we are not talking about TV 2.0 are we. People already use the mobile to connect to people, so why not use it, over and over again.

And the thing on TV is different, there is no transparency. The internet is going to bring transparency. This is why i said imagine digging on digg using your cellphone. That is from the office, from the college, from school, from the parents teacher meetings, while waiting for your dentist’s appointment.

2. If you ask me, what I am waiting for, is not the youTube for mobiles, but P2P.

I want to connect to a lot of cellphones, and get just what I am looking for.

Right now I can connect to another mobile next to mine, if it is bluetooth compatible and downloads songs or whatever it is I want to download, but I cannot connect to the hundreds and thousands and millions in my country.

What we need is a P2P software for the mobile phones, where I can SEARCH what I need and then download it. Maybe there is a LimeWire or BitTorrent for mobile, but I don’t know about it or its not famous it. But it has the hardware to be.

I want to call up my team and say that the requirements are ready, just look at your phone. I want my kids’ teacher to call me and show me his report card. I want to call up my next employer and get the joining letter on the phone, so we can discuss it while talking.

The best part about the mobile, is that it can be used anywhere, unlike a laptop. Even in the loo. I’ve heard people attend calls even when they’re having sex.

3. The third thing that I need is a USB disk, like say Ipod shuffle

There is a lot of memory inside phones these days, but what we need is the ability to connect them directly to the laptop or the computer ( read Ipod shuffle ) so that you can download data at breathtaking speeds. It would be a big help, if I don’t have to carry a USB key everywhere I go.

4. Customization

Unlike the PC’s, mobiles are way too rigid. Maybe that’s the reason for their popularity. Not everybody is a techie. But if you look at the forbes list of the richest people, they are all techies. So what does that tell us? That you’re going to be left behind if you don’t make stuff for the techie. Look at Digg, it was only for the techies.

Now I’m ranting again. What we really need is the ability to say change the operating system, or the softwares and change the way everything is placed on my cell phone.

Imagine it to be like the Linux of the mobile world.

Where you start from scratch and make a phone, which does only that what I want it to do. If I only use to it make calls, I get rid of the space for songs and vice versa.

And I want transparency, which is really lacking in the mobile.

It will definitely help to improve my experience with my cellphone, and maybe these ideas can be businesses in their own right. Maybe they can be the start of a new boom, which starts even before this one ends. Depressions are bad for all of us. So if you have any new ideas, bring them in. Maybe you become the next Moogle.