How ‘Smart’ is your ‘Network’?

‘Smart’ is the new buzz word in these days. Smart phone to smart cities, smart kid to smart guy! Our lives have become smart even without our intentions or efforts. Now the question is How smart are we and our network? Our smartness depends on our intelligence and the way we tackle the day to day challenges in an efficient way. It’s a born gift and can be improved with surrounding society and proper education. Not everyone who holds a smart phone is smart. Sometimes your smartness depends on your smart network.

The evolution of Smart Phone: This year ‘Nokia’ which is the first one to develop the GSM technology is celebrating 150 years of its existence, which also continued the dominance in handset manufacturing till recent years. Though India entered late in to the cellular technology, it adopted very fast and now it is one of the biggest markets after China globally. Our generation also grew with the technology. I still remember my first cell phone a bulky Nokia 3110 (see figure) with which we can only talk and text messages (Rs.8/- for outgoing call and Rs.4/- for incoming call!). Later on handsets/SIMs/networks changed (see figures) so quickly due to the rapid development of technology and changing tastes of consumers. Then came the ‘Smart Phone’ with which you can do all your office/personal/entertainment works along with normal functions of phone smoothly, effortlessly and effectively that it almost replaced PCs/Laptops. Some of the high end smart phones are having configurations better than CAD workstations with which we worked 10 years ago!

Smart Network: What is smart network? Don’t Google, where you will get varieties of definitions. My concept of smart network is different. After thorough study (research?) of different kinds of people and their networks, I found that our individual or personal smart network depends on our contacts (read phone numbers) and their smartness. Very simple! If you consider me, a professor who’s majority of contacts are fellow colleagues (past and present), students, and their parents apart from relatives, friends and neighbours. Let’s consider a ‘Techie’ who’s major contacts will be various clients, colleagues (past and present). Similarly if you consider a doctor/surgeon, whose major contacts are patients, fellow doctors/surgeons, pharmacists etc. You can extend the same to a home maker, student, plumber, painter, contractor, retailer etc etc. Now our smart network comprises of the number of contacts having smart phones (let’s say smart contacts) out of our total contacts in our smart phone.

How to quantify our smart network: To find out whether any contact in our phone is having a smart phone or not, ‘Whatsapp’ app is one of the best sources available in smart phone. The number of Whatsapp users surpassed even the ‘Face book’ users. Last few years the number of Whatsapp users increased exponentially. Also it is the easiest way to find how many number of our contacts using Whatsapp a.k.a our smart network. The following are the simple steps which anyone can find using their mobile smart phones

Step 1: Open the Whatsapp and in ‘chats’ mode click on the + button on top right side as shown in the figure below.

Step 2: Once you click the + button, you will find a screen as given below, from which you can find the number contacts having Whatsapp app which confirms they are using a smart phone. In my smart phone the number is 684 contacts.

Step 3: Now find the total number of contacts in your phone as shown below.

Step 4: Calculate the percentage of your smart network as given below.

That means approximately 70% of my contacts are using smart phones. Still some of my contacts using smart phones and may not have installed Whatsapp. The chances are very rare. This is one observation to find the penetration of smart phones. The percentage depends on type of person and his/her profession. I would like to study further ‘on what factors the percentage depends’ like the profession, age, region, and gender.

Interesting? Find your ‘smart network’ percentage and revert back along with your profession, age, area and gender! Watch this space for more!!