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The cell phone industry is probably one of the weirdest industries in the world. Successful - undoubtedly, but weird nevertheless. It's the only one of its kind with ten different companies churning out hundreds of cell phones a year, providers that change their calling plans overnight, authorized dealers that invade every store space that can be occupied with one person and a glass case, and millions of people (myself included) who overpay every month so that the aforementioned companies, providers and dealers stay in business.
And if you didn't take the clue from the above rant, the fact is that there more choices for a cell-phone customer than humanly comprehensible. First you choose a provider, which isn't that bad...except that all the providers are pretty much about the same, and our wonderful free market economy assures that everybody offers the same service at the same price. Then you get to choose a cell phone - the selection which for some reason differs slightly from provider to provider -from among a pool of hundreds; thank companies like Nokia (for getting their model numbers from either Mersenne Primes or the alignment of the planets) and Samsung (for making fifty cell phones look exactly the same and have model numbers off by one so the average joe cell phone user can really tell which provider their cell phone is intended for) for the ridiculous number of choices. Finally, you choose a plan and hammer out how many of the ten features (which you're never going to use) you're going to pay for.
Of course, as the customer, you've got it easy. I feel sorry for those hard-working people working at authorized dealerships that have to sit and crunch numbers for you; there are actually binders of material and rules to calculate your final cost, and I'm sure they use calculus at some point in factoring in all the promotions and deals a typical plan demands. They don't even get to use graphing calculators, for crying out loud.
Anyway, I ventured into this superhighway-intersection-of-a-mess today to pick up a new cell phone and a new provider. My old phone has decided to retire early, so I needed one that didn't want to cut off my calls and kill reception for no reason. Having researched phones somewhat in the past week or so, I thought I had a good idea of what I wanted.
For the record, though, me and my girlfriend did come back with a fairly decent T-Mobile shared plan and two $400 phones (plus two $25 SIM cards) basically free. Next step: try to get my handfree set to not sound like someone is being brutally murdered, and check out www.cellphoneshop.net for accessories that I don't really need but can actually afford.
Oh, the title? Well, I guess if you consider the capitalist free market as a modern invention, then the cell phone market is capitalist competition gone wild and so is like a glimpse of the future...kinda...screw it, there's no connection.