The Future of Mobile
I hear a lot of talk about what the next big thing in mobile will be and usually the conversation leads to apps. “I found this app that can control all of my smart home devices in one place” or “Do you use (insert cute name here)? I just couldn’t live without it”. And don’t get me wrong, no doubt, mobile applications on smartphones are absolutely incredible these days and there’s still a huge amount of opportunity for innovation and new services. However, I think we’re missing two very important areas which aren’t considered enough, namely, developing mobile markets, and cloud computing.
It’s incredible to think that there are nearly 2 billion smartphones in the world today. I still remember less than a decade ago having a smartphone meant you were pretty much a serious businessperson or a nerd (I was one of the nerds). Nowadays in the US, it’s a given, if you’re not in your 70’s or older, you have a smartphone. Yet if you consider the almost 8 billion mobile phones in the world (that’s a 6 billion device difference for those mathematically challenged) and realize there are still many developing markets for smartphones, it becomes clear just how much growth potential we’re looking at. But what will that look like? From the perspective of the US, it’s easy to think it will be simply a continued dominance of Apple and Samsung spread over the rest of the market; after all, they make great phones, but what about the high cost? In many developing markets abroad, we’re seeing new OEMs (Xiaomi and others) coming out with very respectable low cost smartphones which access the same apps and services we enjoy with our pricier models. When the developing markets become a larger percentage of smartphone users overall, we’ll see how the likes of Apple and Samsung will continue to be relevant on a global scale. Of course there’s always the high end of the market, but as innovation and services becomes more localized and contextualized for developing markets, how sustainable will that model be?
So let’s talk about cloud computing and it’s relevance by starting with a question: why do people hate dealing with technology? Well, because it’s not even as smart as a dumb human. Por ejemplo, even someone with marginal intelligence wouldn’t interrupt me to make sure I took out the trash if I was in an extremely distressed emotional state, but my phone’s alarm will if it’s set. As mobile networks continue to improve, most of the actual computing that’s happening is not taking place on our device but rather on clusters of servers somewhere in the cloud. This means that service providers can allocate an incredible amount of super computing power (both hardware and software) to start making our devices a whole lot smarter. When you consider what Microsoft is doing with Bing and Cortana, what IBM is doing with Watson, and what Google is doing with Google Now and mix in new sensors like the Microsoft Band, all of a sudden the implications lead us to something else entirely, will the phone itself really matter? Let’s take the scenario above, I just had a disastrous life altering situation and I’m completely devastated crying in a corner somewhere. I also have an alarm that’s set with something annoying like “Take out the trash”; if that alarm interrupts me at this time, I’ll probably literally throw it through the window. However, my band has a Galvanic Skin Response Sensor and Heart Rate Monitor which means it can tell I’m unusually stressed, and my alarm app has a priority setting but the alarm isn’t set to urgent, so instead of having the inappropriate alarm go off, my trusted-service-provider/OS/whatever-you-want-to-call-it, shoots me an email instead of sounding the alarm and in the email explains why it didn’t allow the alarm to go off and provides a link to adjust the settings if I didn’t wish this to happen in the future. And just like that, intelligent computing scenarios can become a reality.
In my opinion, I think Apple will struggle to be in a place to offer that level of cloud service, and yet they can’t outsource it to IBM because they would have to open their OS. So for me, the question becomes, does Google, IBM, and Microsoft rule mobile in the future, or is there something else coming? Will people prioritize overall user experience over security and go with an open platform, or will there be businesses who can provide enough relevant experiences to customers on traditional secure platforms? I guess the answer lies with developers as to whether they want to develop their products from the ground up on a truly open platform, or if they’d rather just publish another app in the app store.
Originally posted on www.SlowlyFantastic.com
