Prakash Per­sad

It is es­ti­mat­ed that the world's pop­u­la­tion is around sev­en bil­lion. There are over six bil­lion mo­bile phone sub­scribers. That is not to say that six bil­lion peo­ple pos­sess these phones. In some coun­tries, USA, Rus­sia, Brazil for ex­am­ple, many peo­ple own more than one cell phone.

While it is well neigh im­pos­si­ble to get any sort of ac­cu­rate and up to date sta­tis­tics for T&T, from ca­su­al ob­ser­va­tion, our sub­scriber rate must be way over 100 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion as many peo­ple have sub­scrip­tions with the two mo­bile ser­vices providers.

There has been a strong move­ment to the use of smart phones with some one bil­lion smart phone users. Re­cent­ly the ph­ablets have en­tered the glob­al mar­ket and is show­ing a strong surge lead­ing to es­ti­ma­tions that the num­ber of sub­scribers would ex­ceed the quar­ter bil­lion mark by 2015.

This tech­nol­o­gy has dra­mat­i­cal­ly al­tered the way we so­cialise and do busi­ness. It is rapid­ly chang­ing, pro­vid­ing both op­por­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges. An ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the na­ture of this tech­no­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion would help in plan­ning for the in­creas­ing­ly tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven so­ci­ety.

The in­tro­duc­tion of the cell phone, which is es­sen­tial­ly a so­phis­ti­cat­ed ra­dio, sat­is­fied an un­filled so­cial need by eman­ci­pat­ing us from the re­stric­tions of the land line. The in­tro­duc­tion of the lap­top freed us from the shack­les of the of­fice/home study. The tablet pro­vid­ed an even greater de­gree of free­dom as it was a one-piece com­put­er with a touch-screen key­board.

The tech­nol­o­gy was get­ting more com­pact and pow­er­ful. The smart phone, which has both voice and da­ta, al­lowed for greater con­nec­tiv­i­ty and fa­cil­i­tat­ed e-mail and web brows­ing on the go.

Ap­ple in­tro­duced both the tablet (ipad) and the smart phone (iphone). The iphone with a 3.5-inch screen, fit­ting eas­i­ly and un­ob­tru­sive­ly in one's pock­et, and the ipad with a 9.7-inch screen for more se­ri­ous work but still very portable. The idea ap­par­ent­ly was for peo­ple to have both and this strat­e­gy was very suc­cess­ful in the West.

The Asian mar­ket, how­ev­er, could not sup­port this, as the av­er­age per­son could not af­ford to have two such ex­pen­sive de­vices. So the idea of a ph­ablet came in­to be­ing with it be­ing in­tro­duced in 2008. It stood in the mid­dle of the screen spec­trum: from 5 inch­es to 6.9 inch­es. The Sam­sung Galaxy Note, for in­stance, has a 5.3-inch screen.

Ph­ablets proved to be very pop­u­lar in the Asian mar­kets and the west­ern mar­kets too. The ipad mi­ni is clear­ly Ap­ple's re­sponse to it. They al­low for sketch­ing, note-tak­ing and an­no­ta­tion nor­mal­ly as­so­ci­at­ed tablets. The re­cent launch of the mega ph­ablets, in 5.8 inch­es and 6.3 inch­es mod­els, by Sam­sung has now ig­nit­ed a de­bate as to what is the bound­ary be­tween a tablet and a ph­ablet. The mar­ket would even­tu­al­ly de­cide, one pre­sumes, as fit­ting a de­vice with a screen over six inch­es might very well be un­com­fort­able.

The rise of smart phones and tablets has giv­en tremen­dous im­pe­tus to the de­vel­op­ment of apps and phys­i­cal com­put­ing. There are lit­er­al­ly thou­sands of apps for just about every­thing. The av­er­age used by a per­son can prob­a­bly num­ber up to 100. Many are free. In ad­di­tion to games, many se­ri­ous busi­ness and ed­u­ca­tion­al apps are avail­able and they will force changes in many sec­tors, in­clud­ing tra­di­tion­al­ly con­ser­v­a­tive ones like ed­u­ca­tion, at all lev­els.

The growth of e-jour­nals and e-books has forced us to re­think the idea of a li­brary. The idea of what con­sti­tutes a school or uni­ver­si­ty will have to be rethought. The de­vel­oped world and the de­vel­op­ing coun­tries are mov­ing ahead with these changes. It is be­com­ing abun­dant­ly clear that fail­ing to quick­ly adapt to the de­mands of evolv­ing tech­nol­o­gy is fa­tal to busi­ness. It is not that dif­fer­ent with coun­tries.