Setting Expectations For the Future of Computing.

by Vijay Anand

The experts in Marketing would usually say that, marketing, pricing, the sales process, and the customer satisfaction that follows that can all be related with a simple equation.

Satisfaction = Reality – Expectations. (Thanks!)

And they would be right.

I remember a call from my dad’s friend about a year ago, to come over to his house to check out his new computer that his Son had gotten for him. His children live in the US and they had gotten their parents a computer so as to take advantage of Skype, Webcams and all those cost effective ways of communicating, which would mean more long hours and detailed conversations amongst themselves. His complaint was that the computer sales guy sold him a slower computer when he marketed it as the fastest computer available in the market.

A little bit of clicking around, and lo and behold, it was a duo core, bloated with RAM, hard disk space and a nifty 19″ monitor, bundled with the entire multi-media suite. All was right here except for the expectations.

When I did mention that, this does seem like a fast computer, his simple question was as to why it takes so long to “turn on”. His comparison: “I push the button on my TV and its on, in about five seconds max. I doubt its as fast as they claim these computers are”

This certainly is a serious case of expectations set wrong, but I believe is also an insight. If we are serious about the next one billion, then we need to address this. The reason why India has more cellphone users than computer users, is also because mobile phones in a way did give people the “instant on” reaction that they were expecting – which might not last for long, now that we are getting more complicated OSes into mobile phones and also taking it down the same route as PCs.

Technologists often quote that the mobile phone is the New PC. I think that entire ideology is wrong. PCs have to become what Mobile phones were, and hopefully are still. We are still far away from computing becoming a utility. If it has to evade every household, it has to become what the television is. Thats the expectation we need to satisfy.