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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 on Wednesday at the 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 US 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 US
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."
AFP
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