Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news
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All entries are written by Anders Borg, CEO and Consultant of Abiro, that has a long experience in strategic planning, developing embedded and Java software, usability aspects, and the mobile phone industry in general. You can also read the latest Mobile News entries on your phone via wap.abiro.com, and we provide many News Feeds from popular news services. For advertising and contribution queries, please use the feedback form. News feed (local) FeedBurner Feed
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Monday, December 04, 2006
The future mobile phone is most likely not a phone
Update 20061207: The shell as a display
Update 20061205: Added programmability, AI and movability.
The Economist tries to extrapolate what mobile phones will be like in 15 years time in The phone of the future. It's a good read, and it's pushing the envelope a bit more than these kinds of outlooks tend to do.
15 years is almost like infinity in this business. Just look at what a mobile phone was like 15 years ago (the only thing that hasn't changed is the form factor), so here are some of my own tongue in cheek, but also serious (as in dead serious) thoughts on the matter:
In 15 years there will be no notion of a mobile phone as a distinct device. People will say "15 years ago people used clunky devices called mobile phones", and they will laugh cruelly.
Information access will be the main bandwidth use of phones, and it will be massive. Without guessing too much, in 15 years all revenue will come directly or indirectly from information access and it will of course be flatrate. Voice will be absolutely free, even long distance. We will not talk about specifically mobile access to information. It will all be high capacity broadband in one way or another.
I'm a bit concerned about how advertizing might evolve in 15 years, as it's already a terrible pain in the butt (just look at this site), and even today so many services are solely funded through advertizing, and more are every day. It's everywhere, and almost always irrelevant to a specific user. With a positive mindset I hope advertizing will be way more individualized by then, but there will also be huge concerns about identity. What if advertizing companies get access to all your personal information, so they know that you for instance have a gene causing you to be especially gullible or generally stupid? Scary...
Phones will be used as wireless keys, money and identity. All are security-oriented, so advancements in security must be made for this to work without risk of identity theft etc. Mechanical keys, money and business cards are so 20th century, and the current plastic money cards are so unsafe that it's amazing we are still using this crap (the only remaining security is the perception of security). Smart cards are much better, and what you already have in a phone (at least on GSM) is a smart card. Even so, expect something way better than even smart cards.
All mobile devices will be programmable in the sense that you can download new firmware and after-market applications. Potentially most service-enabling will be done that way, as the cost will be very low, and the devices will have tons of memory for storing the applications. Data will though mostly be online.
AI hopefully has evolved enough in 15 years to provide semi-human reactions to user requests, including emotional responses (for good or bad). Of course then speaker-independent speech recognition and speech synthesis will be important. In simple terms for speaking messages, feeds etc but in advanced terms to act as an interactive device/avatar, that you can speak to and that will act as a cyber-friend, as an intelligent organizer, etc.
There's technology in the works for providing small legs and arms to devices, with electronically controlled muscles, so maybe the phone will be your communication device as well as your tiny cyber-pet. It could then run to the power supply if it's close to running out of battery, and clean up your desk while you are in front of your computer etc. Maybe not...
Memory will not be an issue for music, video etc. The question is what's beyond even DVD quality movies. Storing matter and DNA sequences (e.g. for cloning your pet ... or your favorite kid)?
I hear industry representatives complain about subsidizing and that it causes people to not make conscious choices about phones, but subsidizing is actually driving the phone replacement market and also the market as a whole. Otherwise very few would upgrade, and most would still use phones that can only do voice and SMS. It's very likely this will also drive the market in the future, even though it sounds conservative. Possibly there will be other ways of funding evolution.
As the cost of a voice/SMS device at that time will be close to zero and almost invisible to the eye (well not quite, but certainly smaller), expect such functionality to be integrated in devices you wouldn't even consider today, like all kitchen equipment, cars, traffic lights etc (to report failure and for reprogramming etc), all consumer electronics, pets (hopefully external though) etc etc.
On a more negative note, in 15 years time the radio technologies as we know it might be forbidden due to health risks, so at the same time when all oil will be gone and water has risen 10 meters, we might also have to reconsider the very notion of using wireless technologies. Hopefully this will not be the case, but we shouldn't just believe future will be more of what we have today. I rather think the future will also be a lot different (as in side-ways shift) than today. The world is not endless.
People will still be people, and very much unchanged, but if the stress levels are high today among young people due to being always accessible, it might be a magnitude worse in 15 years. This is likely to cause societal changes. What if you are always (and I mean always) hooked up to a voice chat session with all your friends? As there will be no cost for voice per se, this is fully possible. That's almost like telepathy, and interestingly this could make groups of people behave as if they were at the same location constantly, even though they are always apart, working together, learning together etc.
The Economist article mentions miniature projectors (prototypes exist using scanning lasers). What about eye displays? Not the bulky ones available today, that require glasses, but rather something you could let float over one eye (like a lens) that would show all received messages and TV etc. I'm not a friend of operating in stuff, and I don't think a communication device as a whole should be, but for many reasons you might do it with earphones and microhphones. Again, I'm not a fan, but stranger things have happened.
If the future realization of a mobile phone is at all visible as a specific device then it's likely it will be possible to skin the device via software. Today you buy a new shell to get it customized, but the technology for creating plastic-based displays is most likely very low cost in 15 years (it's probably low cost in just a few years). By wrapping the whole phone in such a display it's just a matter of downloading a picture optimized for the phone's dimensions and display it on the shell. Normally this takes energy which would makes it work only as a notifier, e.g. when a call arrives, but it's also possible to make static multi-color displays, and then the picture would stay without any extra energy consumption. As a notifier the interesting effect is that it could show different pictures and colors depending on who's calling, etc.
Update 20061205: Added programmability, AI and movability.
The Economist tries to extrapolate what mobile phones will be like in 15 years time in The phone of the future. It's a good read, and it's pushing the envelope a bit more than these kinds of outlooks tend to do.
15 years is almost like infinity in this business. Just look at what a mobile phone was like 15 years ago (the only thing that hasn't changed is the form factor), so here are some of my own tongue in cheek, but also serious (as in dead serious) thoughts on the matter:
In 15 years there will be no notion of a mobile phone as a distinct device. People will say "15 years ago people used clunky devices called mobile phones", and they will laugh cruelly.
Information access will be the main bandwidth use of phones, and it will be massive. Without guessing too much, in 15 years all revenue will come directly or indirectly from information access and it will of course be flatrate. Voice will be absolutely free, even long distance. We will not talk about specifically mobile access to information. It will all be high capacity broadband in one way or another.
I'm a bit concerned about how advertizing might evolve in 15 years, as it's already a terrible pain in the butt (just look at this site), and even today so many services are solely funded through advertizing, and more are every day. It's everywhere, and almost always irrelevant to a specific user. With a positive mindset I hope advertizing will be way more individualized by then, but there will also be huge concerns about identity. What if advertizing companies get access to all your personal information, so they know that you for instance have a gene causing you to be especially gullible or generally stupid? Scary...
Phones will be used as wireless keys, money and identity. All are security-oriented, so advancements in security must be made for this to work without risk of identity theft etc. Mechanical keys, money and business cards are so 20th century, and the current plastic money cards are so unsafe that it's amazing we are still using this crap (the only remaining security is the perception of security). Smart cards are much better, and what you already have in a phone (at least on GSM) is a smart card. Even so, expect something way better than even smart cards.
All mobile devices will be programmable in the sense that you can download new firmware and after-market applications. Potentially most service-enabling will be done that way, as the cost will be very low, and the devices will have tons of memory for storing the applications. Data will though mostly be online.
AI hopefully has evolved enough in 15 years to provide semi-human reactions to user requests, including emotional responses (for good or bad). Of course then speaker-independent speech recognition and speech synthesis will be important. In simple terms for speaking messages, feeds etc but in advanced terms to act as an interactive device/avatar, that you can speak to and that will act as a cyber-friend, as an intelligent organizer, etc.
There's technology in the works for providing small legs and arms to devices, with electronically controlled muscles, so maybe the phone will be your communication device as well as your tiny cyber-pet. It could then run to the power supply if it's close to running out of battery, and clean up your desk while you are in front of your computer etc. Maybe not...
Memory will not be an issue for music, video etc. The question is what's beyond even DVD quality movies. Storing matter and DNA sequences (e.g. for cloning your pet ... or your favorite kid)?
I hear industry representatives complain about subsidizing and that it causes people to not make conscious choices about phones, but subsidizing is actually driving the phone replacement market and also the market as a whole. Otherwise very few would upgrade, and most would still use phones that can only do voice and SMS. It's very likely this will also drive the market in the future, even though it sounds conservative. Possibly there will be other ways of funding evolution.
As the cost of a voice/SMS device at that time will be close to zero and almost invisible to the eye (well not quite, but certainly smaller), expect such functionality to be integrated in devices you wouldn't even consider today, like all kitchen equipment, cars, traffic lights etc (to report failure and for reprogramming etc), all consumer electronics, pets (hopefully external though) etc etc.
On a more negative note, in 15 years time the radio technologies as we know it might be forbidden due to health risks, so at the same time when all oil will be gone and water has risen 10 meters, we might also have to reconsider the very notion of using wireless technologies. Hopefully this will not be the case, but we shouldn't just believe future will be more of what we have today. I rather think the future will also be a lot different (as in side-ways shift) than today. The world is not endless.
People will still be people, and very much unchanged, but if the stress levels are high today among young people due to being always accessible, it might be a magnitude worse in 15 years. This is likely to cause societal changes. What if you are always (and I mean always) hooked up to a voice chat session with all your friends? As there will be no cost for voice per se, this is fully possible. That's almost like telepathy, and interestingly this could make groups of people behave as if they were at the same location constantly, even though they are always apart, working together, learning together etc.
The Economist article mentions miniature projectors (prototypes exist using scanning lasers). What about eye displays? Not the bulky ones available today, that require glasses, but rather something you could let float over one eye (like a lens) that would show all received messages and TV etc. I'm not a friend of operating in stuff, and I don't think a communication device as a whole should be, but for many reasons you might do it with earphones and microhphones. Again, I'm not a fan, but stranger things have happened.
If the future realization of a mobile phone is at all visible as a specific device then it's likely it will be possible to skin the device via software. Today you buy a new shell to get it customized, but the technology for creating plastic-based displays is most likely very low cost in 15 years (it's probably low cost in just a few years). By wrapping the whole phone in such a display it's just a matter of downloading a picture optimized for the phone's dimensions and display it on the shell. Normally this takes energy which would makes it work only as a notifier, e.g. when a call arrives, but it's also possible to make static multi-color displays, and then the picture would stay without any extra energy consumption. As a notifier the interesting effect is that it could show different pictures and colors depending on who's calling, etc.
