Vodafone Chief Arun Sarin interviewed by SMS Text News (almost)

So – to all you doubting-Thomases out there who said that I’d have to apply in writing, in triplicate, to ask 5 questions of Vodafone Chief Arun Sarin, only to be declined:  Well… you were wrong! 

I emailed their Group Media relations, who kindly declined my offer thus:

Dear Ewan

Thank you for your query and for inviting our CEO to feature on your website. Unfortunately, we are not able to accept your invitation, but we wish you every success with the site.

Well I reckon that’s kind of them anyway.  Polite and courteous.

Here are the five questions I posed to Arun.  Since Vodafone are unable to answer them, I have decided to indulge in rampant speculation and answer them myself:   

1. What mobile handset do you use at the moment? Why did you pick it?

I reckon he uses a Nokia Communicator.  Sensible, right?  A sensible device for a busy executive who needs a ton of  battery power and one that syncs a heck of a lot of contacts.  I also reckon he’ll have a Blackberry.   I don’t think he’d be one for messing around with Windows Mobile devices. 

Ahh but hold on a moment! He needs to have a sparky device that he can demonstrate stuff on — like mobile TV.  It’s expected.  He wouldn’t have an N90, as they’re not Vodafone standard.  I reckon he also has an N70 around the place, to show off Vodafone TV and video calling.  Perhaps he has one of their top of the range Sony Ericssons — the W900 for example?

2. Have you ever, or do you regularly ‘moblogg’ or ‘vlog’?
(i.e. taken a picture/video and sent it to a friend/website)

Difficult one.  I reckon he’s probably demonstrated moblogging.. or at least he must have demonstrated taking a picture and then sending it to an email or another handset.  At a stretch, he might have taken a photo and sent it on a postcard  to a friend (this is a little known but wicked service that Vodafone offer — I’ve tried it a few times).

3. What’s your ringtone?

Gahhhh this one is difficult. Does he just use a standard one, included on the device?  OR would he use one that he’s downloaded from Vodafone Live?  Ok I think I will answer ‘no comment’ with this question.

4. Which section(s) of Vodafone Live do you regularly use?

News? & sport, perhaps?  Again, this is really difficult and it would have been quite interesting to see which sections he’d have picked to highlight.

5. What is your most used function on your handset, aside from calling and texting?

Hmmmmm.  I wonder if Arun is a busy guy who just doesn’t get time to use his handset for anything other than calling and possibly texting?  You know when you’re having a busy day — and you’re going from stress-to-stress, meeting-to-meeting, gulping down lunch, etc. — Those kind of days are not conducive to experimenting with other handset functions.  I think his answer to this question would have been really interesting. 

(Incidentally, I have posted similar questions to the Chief Exec’s of Verizon, T-Mobile and Orange.  Picture of Arun from his Wikipedia entry).