The Mobile Apps Paradigm

written for       :

Got an opportunity to peek into the mobile app paradigm, interact , brainstorm and inhale the energy, restlessness and ambitions of various entities that form the ecosystem defining this landscape. I decided to take some time off and interact with minds that imagine and create. I found myself walking the corridors of Microsoft TechEd 2013. The energy was intoxicating, and infectious.

All the big names from TCSs , Infosys's and Wipro's of the world to small unheard of startups, were all there. A couple of 22-24 year olds proudly flashing their business cards carrying the names of their startups and their CEO designation starkly contrasting mature 35 year old project managers carrying equal amount of energy and enthusiasm. Almost everyone I met believed that as developers, they have the power to shape culture, influence behaviour  and redefine lifestyle ! They all said it in so many words.

I took some time out, sat in a corner to ponder on that statement. When I look at the Apple iphone  and ipad, the Android smartphones and tablets and now the windows 8 smartphones and tablets; the singular thing that strikes me is that, there was no real crying need for any of these devices from the any of the consumer community and nobody really asked for it as a solution to a problem. As a corporate citizen, I have always been moulded in the mindset that  innovation occurs when one is forced into a crisis or issues of significant criticality. Sometimes, in such situations, dramatically incremental changes pass off as innovations within an enterprise. Problem solving has always been the main corporate theme. Corporates work on opportunity creation when the existing set of revenue generating techniques run their course to stagnation and/or finally  become irrelevant. This happens because corporates invest in platforms and then refuse to make changes till they sweat the platform to maximize their return on investment. Having said this, there are a few forward looking ones who experiment to find new opportunities. These generally tend to be organizations in the hi-tech space ( where R&D is part of their platform) or family run businesses in the non hi-tech space.

The developers who were walking the corridors with me were of different mindset. These guys were dreaming of a space where things could be done differently, the difference being the cool factor. One of the guys showed me an app where the you rest a mobile phone on a table and once you invoke the app, the camera comes on, the phone vibrates and the vibration was programatically controlled to make the phone rotate 360 degrees in a 120 second window to capture a panoramic view of your surrounding. I was stumped, not because of the programmatic brilliance needed to achieve this( none needed actually), but was a little amazed on the need for the mind to come up with something like this. Who needs such a solution. What was the seed of this idea?  I asked her. She just shrugged and said, that every time her phone vibrated on silent mode, she always felt it would simply be cool to channelize the energy generated by the vibration to get the phone to move in a circular motion and capture the image. Then she developed a software that can help you look at this amazing complex picture render different parts of it in context and scale that gives you some amazing views. One her friends, smiled and said, sometimes when you are living your life, you miss all the wonderful things that are happening around you which are not in line of your sight ! 

Bottom-line, these guys are not in the problem solving mode. They are in the mode of creating things that people have not asked for, never imagined they might need it and might not even pay to use it. They want to infect people with their output and attempt redesign our lifestyle, influence our behavior and our culture. More power to the programming brains. Software developers have truely shaped our lifestyle and culture. I am devotee of shirdi Sai Baba and see my god and the aarti whenever my heart desires, thanks to the portal that webcasts live. I have got into the behaviour of seeking blessings live from shirdi before I get into something important, the first thing after I wake up in the morning and before I hit the sack! I go about travelling to places without planning at all, thanks to the gps based apps that map, find hotels and eating joints. I have various metrics at hand as I jog, from the num of kms to my heart rate and the music I need to keep me going.  From what I have seen and heard at TecEd, I foresee us swamped with apps that we would never ask for and that we can do without, but very soon our lives will start revolving around these. Apps of similar nature will find their way into education, healthcare, banking and also into our family life and our personal space.