Rajesh, via the Pondering Primate, points to a Newsweek article about the potential for mobile phones to “leapfrog” not only digital cameras (84 million phones with digital cameras were shipped last year) but also personal computers. “This phone will be your alter ego,” says Hartmut Esslinger, Frog Design founder.
Esslinger refers to his “petfrog”, a Phone of the Future, that Newsweek Next Frontiers invited him to design from scratch basing it upon what might be feasible with existing technology. The touch screen of this mockup can display currently common interfaces, e.g., keypad to keyboard to mouse pad or game console. Other versatility includes the ability to accept a variety of “smart card” enhancements.
Today’s most sophisticated phones have the processing power of a mid-1990s PC while consuming 100 times less electricity. And more and more of today’s phones have computerlike features, allowing their owners to send e-mail, browse the Web and even take photos.
Note: The Newsweek article omits the audio features of these smart phones.
There is a fascinating pace to such development. Tokyoites (Tokyoites?), who are linked to the fastest mobile networks in the world, use their phones to watch TV, read books and magazines and play games. Already there is considerable specialization, e.g., the gadgets used to guarantee a rapid inventory or to ensure that a purchase has been delivered properly; we can expect to see greater diversification of wireless input / output devices. The grocery web site of the Future may very well have to post a message to discourage robot shoppers from inserting sweetness probes in the melons they are selecting for their clients. And, as the infrastructure improves, we should see more location-based services, especially those interfacing to transportation.
The majority of manufacturers of luxury automobiles now offer vehicle navigation systems that combine wireless technology with a global positioning system (GPS) and mapping software. These systems, which require either a Garmin, Magellan, Navman, Lowrance, or Kenwood receiver, actually do more than aid navigation; they are providing increasingly sophisticated, location-based services, e.g., safety (traffic and weather conditions), security (yours and theirs), and emergency response — basically anything that “old-timey” automobile clubs and travel guides would provide.
Possible advertisement in the near future:
“I’m thinking of sending my daughter to Europe as a graduation gift.”
“Well, make sure she has a Fodor Fone.”
While you may think that I am joking, and, in part, I am, Google forges ahead.
The development and acceptance of such enhanced (and / or enhancable) vehicle telematics is one specialized application that may serve as a good indicator of the overall progress of smart phones. Writes Julie Sturgeon, a freelance writer based in Indiana:
“U.S. drivers have seen enough of (these onboard navigation) systems to know to choose a DVD-based unit over the CD-ROM version to prevent changing discs every few states. Voice activation, which allows drivers to speak their destination rather than type it in, also receives high marks. And the discussions of optimal dashboard display positions are becoming as passionate as arguments among photographers over the merits of Canon vs. Nikon.” — Vehicle Navigation Systems
Personal bioinformatics is a promise of the semantic web yet to be met, the spread of which smart phones might foster. Read the following blurb about an onboard navigational system available in Cadillacs since 1998 and replace information about the automobile with information about a patient:
“OnStar users simply make a call to the OnStar center on the car’s cell phone. Before a voice connection is established, the OnStar system sends a burst of data with the car’s VIN number and location, determined, as with ordinary navigation systems by GPS and dead reckoning. When the human OnStar operator answers, the caller gives the appropriate password, and then has the full range of OnStar services available.” — OnStar: What is it?
So, a big question is how quickly smart phones will move into the mainstream, expanding from the high-end business usage? As an aside, it would seem that the deleted space may be proprietary, i.e., a smartphone is a Microsoft Windows Mobile Smartphone that will connect you to MSN Mobile, so that you can receive the latest in Hotmail spam.
And, another aside, an example of high-end business usage is a comment that globe-trotting, venture capitalist and Nokia promoter, Joi Ito, recently posted to his weblog / online diary: “Unfortunately, my GSM phones don’t work here (in Seoul, Korea) so I don’t think I’ll be able to moblog.” (I had to search the Internet, using Acronym Finder to learn that GSM stands for Global System for Mobile Communications (cellular phone technology) and Wikipedia to inform you that moblogging is posting content to the Internet from a mobile or portable device.)
Anyway, according to John Jackson, wireless analyst at consultant Yankee Group, the market for smart mobile devices is now in the very early stages of development and expected to grow rapidly. While only 23.5 million smart phones had been sold in 2004, Yankee estimates the global market, with 1.8 billion mobile devices, will have 49 million smart phones by yearend, and expects the number of smart phones to double again in 2006. (“Smart Phones: Intelligence Spreads”)
An alternate title for this post could have been Scalability, Exploding Cell Phones and Traffic Report Metadata, nonetheless, I like the “Make It So” inference.
