This March I thought I would consider our marriage to modern day technology and whether in our vows to our life long addiction to it include for better or for worse.

Where am I coming from? Well like any marriage we make commitments to the bond that is marriage and to our partner in the act. Through thick and thin, for better or for worse, and so on.

With today’s technology we probably spent more time with it than we do with your partners and I wondered what the loyalty factor was and what drives the loyalty. I remember not to many years ago I would not have considered any phone other than a Nokia; you would have to be a fool to use any other handset. The loyalty was in the brand, for better or for worse.

Then Nokia lost grip of where the market was going and made the bad mistake of creating fashion looking phones and ignoring the massive move over the thin clam shaped phones and of course Apple blew the market wide open with the IPhone and the age of the smart phone.

Loyalty then just became about desire and I want the new phone because look what they say it does.

Of course technology is in almost every part of our life, from the box in our living room that we stare at for hours as it streams the latest and greatest programmes to us, to the laptop or tablet that we use to surf the net. Even to the choice of kitchen appliances that are around.

There are so many elements that guide us, is it the budget, well I am as loyal as the money I can spend, so brand loyalty is out the window or is it down their durability, I always buy their stuff it just seems to last for ever and ever.

I have to ask if the consumer of today is better informed than the consumer of the past due to the Internet or do they just succumb to the marketing that the Internet allows. The other thing of course is peer pressure and what difference that makes. Having been in IT for a good few years now and a self-confessed GEEK and I do love the latest bit of technology and if budget allowed would gladly like to try most of them. However I have also become discerning and use the Internet as the sounding board it really is and take in as many reviews as possible as well as first person testimonies of people who have used the kit I am interested in

However, I still see so many people flash out their new IPhone or Samsung and when questioned have done little to no research and in fact the loyalty is not even to the brand but to the trend that could be here today and gone tomorrow.

So is our loyalty to our beloved technology down to a fleeting trend or something else, what are your thoughts.

Ian Thomson

Founder/Trainer/Consultant

IT Turning Point www.itturningpoint.com