Sigh! This picture of mine is now doing rounds in Facebook,
much to the amusement of smartphone generation. Though it pains me a lot but
can't blame them. After all the cool quotient of a gadget has a very short
lifespan - barely a couple of years if one is lucky, and I count myself as one.
Nearly a decade ago I was a hot property and the darling of
every dude and wannabes. My parent company Nokia ruled the airwaves and was
living up to its ad slogan ‘connecting people’.
And I was the face of its success. My sleek antenna-less
exterior appealed a lot to the hipsters, who were graduating out of primitive pagers. My sturdy exterior was an added plus as
these teeny boppers are very careless when it comes to handling gadgets.
When I entered the Indian market, the cell phone call
charges were hovering at Rs 14/minute and even incoming calls were being
charged, plus the customs authorities were extracting their pound of flesh
through duties. Hence the early sales reports were not very encouraging.
But once the call charges started plunging and incoming
calls became free, there was no looking back. I became the most happening
handset in the regular, grey and even the second hand markets. Gradually the
customs duty too got reduced and the grey market began losing its sheen.
In a country where the landline penetration was abysmal and
one had to wait for years to get a connection - and that too after greasing
many palms, our entry was a great liberator and leveller. As the cell phone
penetration started increasing I started figuring in the resale market and
began entering homes where basic amenities like toilets and running water were
non-existent and a landline phone was even beyond the realm of fantasy.
People ranging from students to businessmen to senior
citizens started exploring my dexterity. Even those who were not well versed in
English used their own ingenuity to circumvent the handicap. They used code language to store numbers on their phones. Hence it was 'BB' for wife and 'DD'
for sister. Similarly they also used their ingenuity to send text messages. The
'snake' game became quite popular especially among gurkhas employed to guard
the apartments. They would while away their leisurely afternoons playing the
game.
My nearest competitor was Samsung R220. Though its blue
backlit display gave a futuristic feel, the external antenna betrayed a dated
look. It was also perceived as not so good receiver of signals and was no match
to my durability. The other competitor was of course my cousin - Nokia 3315. It
somehow was not as good looking as myself (honestly I am not blowing my trumpet) and
though it was lighter, it had a tacky plastic feel.
My sales started plummeting once phones with facilities such
as FM radio and camera, notably Nokia 6610 and 6630 and later the N-series,
started appearing in the market. The emergence of Moto Razr too caused a body
blow to my popularity and I got relegated as a product confined to resale
market.
The entry of Blackberry and other smart phones caught my
parent company on the wrong foot and things were never the same again. First we
started losing out in the higher end segment but later we got reduced to an
also ran player in all the segments.
Now we have become a butt of ridicule and there are many
jokes surrounding Nokia in general and myself in particular. The most popular one, which figured in the
social networking site Reddit, has a photo of myself and an iPhone. The caption below the iPhone image was “Falls to the floor/Break the screen” and below mine it was “Falls
to the floor/Break the floor.”
Also Read: Bangalore Beat
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