tech

Tech leaders ponder future of mobile phones

8 Comments

The pace of innovation and change in mobile devices is so dizzying it is difficult to predict the winning platforms and products of the next few years.

With that caveat, a panel of technology executives and experts nevertheless took out their crystal balls at the recent Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in this Colorado resort to take a glimpse into the mobile future.

Before an audience of movers and shakers from Silicon Valley and elsewhere, they looked at trends among smartphones and the fast-growing market for tablet computers pioneered by Apple's iPad.

"I'd say that whatever we can imagine in this room right now will be possible in five years," said George Colony, founder and chief executive of technology and market research company Forrester.

"Everyone will have smartphones within four years, all over the world, it'll be so cheap," Colony said. "By 2014, we believe that one-third of Americans will own a tablet."

Frank Meehan, founder of handset maker INQ Mobile, repeatedly brought up the futuristic Steven Spielberg film "Minority Report" to describe the possibilities on the horizon for mobile devices.

In the 2002 film, star Tom Cruise notably moves pictures, documents and video around on an interactive screen at lightning speed using just hand motions.

Colony traced the evolution of the user interface for mobile devices to the current touchscreen technology popularized by the iPhone and iPad and pondered what might come next.

"Microsoft could take the Kinect technology and that could be the next big change," he said of the motion-sensing XBox 360 game controller from the U.S. software giant.

"If you look back at over 30 years of tech, all of the big changes have come through changes in user interface," Colony said. "Always look to user interface if you want to understand where the thunderstorm will be."

Stephen Hoover, chief executive of PARC, Xerox's legendary research and development unit, said next-generation mobile capability will involve the seamless "integration of the physical and digital worlds."

Mobile devices will be able to provide "the information that's most relevant to me now, physically where I am, and in the context of what I'm trying to do," Hoover said.

"We're at the cusp of really being able to integrate all of these different sources of data and understand people's intention in context and give them the information that's useful at the time they need it," he said.

Todd Bradley, executive vice president of US computer giant Hewlett-Packard, agreed and said mobile devices will possess an ability to deliver what he called a "ubiquitous experience."

He spoke of "the ubiquity of a device that knows I'm at Starbucks and that I read The New York Times when I'm at Starbucks."

The U.S. coffee chain is already allowing patrons in the United States to pay for their lattes with mobile phones, and the Fortune Brainstorm panelists said they expect huge growth over the coming years in mobile payments.

"I actually wonder if the lead in mobile isn't going to come from Asia," said Meehan. "In China, in India, in Indonesia the mobile operator is your source of cash."

Hoover said the increasingly powerful cameras built into mobile phones and tablets will provide all sorts of other opportunities.

"You look at the quality of the cameras today in the device and the power that they have and there's a lot of things you can do with scene recognition," he said.

"I hold up a camera to the sign of the restaurant and get recommendations," Hoover said. "We have that technology today, it's about putting it together."

© Agence France-Presse

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

8 Comments
Login to comment

People that invent he future and people that look at the current tech and guess the future are two different people. You need to stop thinking what is possible from looking at current tech and trends. Trends are made on the back of new ideas not new devices.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Still have my old Nokia and dont feel the need to upgrade,I make and answer phone calls, ignore and delete texts and take the odd pic, so for me it serves its purpose and new techknoledgy is a pain in the posteria as far as im concerned.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

He spoke of the ubiquity of a device that knows I am at Starbucks and that I read The New York Times when I am at Starbucks.

It's not privacy invasion. It's a feature!

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Apple will always lead the market from here on in, unless they get extremely lazy after Jobs is gone (and if he keeps getting as sick as he has that may be soon -- at least in terms of retirement). They already always have an edge as they are often making second gen products when other companies are working on their first. With everything Apple creates being so interactive, too, it's a big help to by other Apple products.

Anyway, if smart phones DO become so much cheaper in the future I hope that the mobile companies reflect that in their contract practices -- it's ridiculous they expect you to pay so much for 24 installments and that you can't buy the body flat out unless you want to pay an arm and a leg. I look forward to owning a tablet as well, but until there's a big advantage to having one over a cell phone you can do the same thing on, I'll avoid them (granted, the screens a lot bigger and sharper, but still).

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

Christina: "Still have my old Nokia and dont feel the need to upgrade,I make and answer phone calls, ignore and delete texts and take the odd pic, so for me it serves its purpose and new techknoledgy is a pain in the posteria as far as im concerned."

I respect you for that and anyone else who thinks along the same lines. And yes, all the tech and apps you get hooked on are incredible time wasters, although very convenient in many cases. Sadly, in a lot of places, and likely every where else in the near future laws are often created to ENSURE that people upgrade; that or else service for certain things stop. There's no way I could still be using my older cell phones because they stopped the 2G service in Japan a couple years back. Even my TV is no longer useable because analog broadcasting stopped this week on Sunday. When money for certain technologies isn't being made at a certain rate of profitability, they will often 'force' people to buy the new products.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

@smith: Bit of an over reaction there on your part. Docomo do not turn their 2G service off until the end of next March. Thats tem and a half years after launching 3G service. If you had a contract however, with those crooks at Softbank I understand. Your TV is fine, you can buy a 6000 Yen tuner. This is hardly 'forcing' anybody to buy new products.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Now,mobile phone have a lot of functions. I can not use it perfectly. I want not to increase functions any more.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

The future of mobile Phones will be waterproof (about 20meters undersea), 24-megapixel camera, ultra-high-sensitive microphone and highly-advance Voice Encoder (Vocoder) for teleconferencing, delivering and sending (including tethering functions) of high-definition movies via 6-GHz frequencies and above at a bandwidth wider than the current 15-MHz wide offered by LTE. Once 6Ghz frequency is achieved in mobile phones, video phone will be in a form of holographic projections of the person in the other line at real-time and can have a holographic recording just like in the movie I.ROBOT in 2004.

Android phones has more capability to turn my prophecy into reality by 2020-2040. Hardware-wise, and at some point software-wise, Android phones are advancing at a wider pace than what apple is making. I can already see in the technological lead of Android phones that flooding the Japanese market right now.

I am not a member of iHaters because I don't even care whenever there is new iProduct. I am happy with AU phone since IDO (the company name before AU) in 1998. The companies where I worked before for several years gave us DoCOmo phones for work and I have no complain with their phones and the services.

But, 5 months ago, as a gift to my wife, maybe because several of her friends have iPhone, I also bought her iPhone 4. Barely 4 months, the iPhone overheated and most probably broken due to the saliva of my one-year old kid. There is no monthly insurance of 390 yen just like in DoCOmo and AU, so now my iPhone became an iBrick which Apple would like to charge me 26,000YEN for the repair of it.

With BAD Customer Service of Softbank and Apple, I transferred my wife phone to DoComo even though I will still be paying 20 more months of 1,920yen monthly amortization. There is a lot of Waterproof Android phones in the market and I did not know until now why I bought an iCrap iPhone which became an iBrick easily. Now I remember why Apple never offered a monthly insurance (even though I insisted) because they know how crappy the hardware of their iPhone is. I have more than two years old AU phone, and my xPeria x10 is more than 1 year old but in spite I am paying a 390 yen for monthly hardware insurance, they never break. Docomo and AU even told me that they will replace my phone even if i intentionally break them. Because of this, I also transferred my current company's work phone (which is a softbank phone) to DoCOmo Smartphone.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Login to leave a comment

Facebook users

Use your Facebook account to login or register with JapanToday. By doing so, you will also receive an email inviting you to receive our news alerts.

Facebook Connect

Login with your JapanToday account

User registration

Articles, Offers & Useful Resources

A mix of what's trending on our other sites