My, what a year it’s been. I’m currently sandwiched between Christmas 2009 and the 2010 New Year – and taking a break from my sprout and cranberry bubble-and-squeak to write a few notes for The Fonecast’s first podcast of 2010. Next week we’ll be looking back at 2009, turning our backs on Swine Flu and President Obama’s election in favour of the iPhone 3GS, Avenir Telecom and Digital Britain.
As part of my research I’ve browsed through Google Zeitgeist – its spirit of 2009 summary – for a little inspiration. And you know what? The UK mobile industry doesn’t play much of a part in it. Oh, sure, there’s a lot of online stuff and that inevitable bleed-through into the mobile internet… but we’re not really all that big. Lady Gaga, cheap flights, Facebook; they matter to the people of the UK. Mobile phones? Not important.
And for a moment I was taken back to my school days and a lesson from our Religious Studies teacher. One day he talked on the subject of “No-one believes in their own immortality”. He said we could easily imagine a world without other people – but not without ourselves. I remember it as being a very effective lesson. At this point we’d not read Freud’s thoughts on the subject. I still haven’t.
Anyway, it brought me back to a topic that I’ve touched on a couple of times this year. We in the mobile phone business really shouldn’t be so full of ourselves (if, of course, we are). Things that we think of as enormously big deals don’t carry the same weight for other people. No-one outside our little bubble world cares about the merger of Orange and T-Mobile. Not really.
Which means we 'mobile people' probably need to spend more time in 2010 explaining why these things are important. And perhaps, just perhaps, we need to get a little perspective, too!
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