The Hindu Business Line, 13th September 2010 , eWorld
A nascent market segment between Smartphone and Laptop PC is being formed.
G Krishna Kumar
While the world's doctors debate whether the latest iPhone application, iStethoscope, could replace the stethoscope, there is no doubt that simple and user-friendly smartphone applications are taking the world by storm. With the Appstore and Android marketplace together hosting over 3.5 lakh downloadable applications (Apps), the smartphone applications space thrives both on innovation and convergence.
Yesterday's smart high-end phone is today's mid-range phone and tomorrow's entry-level phone, says a Forrester report. World-wide, smartphone sales are expected to more than double and cross 460 million over the next two years. Morgan Stanley's Mobile Internet report states that trends in 3G, social networking, Video, VoIP, along with impressive smartphone devices, would lead the way towards convergence.
Smartphones are part of the larger “Connected Devices” universe comprising consumer electronics devices such as TV, laptop, e-reader and digital camera. By 2015, it is estimated there will be one trillion connected devices. Technology and Hardware companies are in a race for market share in this market. In fact, Google and Apple, with their Internet-enabled device to be launched shortly, are aggressively entering the “Connected TV” or “Smart TV” market by providing OTT (Over-the-Top) services.
On the home front
Smartphones are set to play an important role in the “Home Convergence” segment. How about, for instance, watching a high-definition video stored on the smartphone on a big screen TV? Printing mobile photos, editing mobile content on PCs, using the smartphone as a storage device are other examples of convergence. The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) helps consumers locate and share photos, videos and music between their mobile phones and other consumer electronic devices. Gartner indicates that there has been a steady increase in the number of DLNA-Certified mobile devices over the last two years, with the Tier 1 handset manufacturers leading from the front.
Auto drive
In-car entertainment is a rapidly growing field that allows all occupants of a car to use features such as navigation, entertainment, location-based services, connectivity to devices and broadband networks. Devices such as the Nokia Car kit connect smartphones with other devices through “clickwheel” and voice prompts. GENIVI is an association where automotive, consumer electronic and mobile handset companies are driving adoption of an In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) open source development platform. GENIVI plans to use Meego, an open source Linux platform supported by Intel and Nokia. Android and Meego are poised to be the leaders in the cross-device architecture platforms enabling convergence among the connected devices, including the IVI systems.
Innovation at every turn
Apple's game-changing “user experience” on the iPhone device has revolutionised the smartphone market. Wider touch screen has become the de facto requirement for any smartphone. Considering that the first iPhone was launched in 2007, now there are over 100 touch-based smartphone models. From Amazon's Kindle, Sony's Reader, Apple's iPad, Dell's Streak, HP's slate, to the latest entrant Cisco's Cius, there is a sudden spurt in the widescreen Tablet devices. Browsing pictures, watching videos, and reading books are simple on the Tablets. A nascent market segment between Smartphone and Laptop PC is being formed. The current Tablet devices are likely to become thinner with foldable screen to enable ease of carrying.
Examples abound on the rapid innovation on smartphones. Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers are building pressure sensors into the phone that can detect the exact position of a person's fingers. The phone can switch function, depending on the user's grip; flipping between camera, phone, music, for example, without one pressing any buttons. A Carnegie Mellon Student uses skin as input for smartphones by using a combination of simple bio-acoustic sensors; and some sophisticated machine learning makes it possible for people to use their fingers or forearms — and potentially, any part of the body — as touchpads to control smartphones.
“Sidesight” an infra-red based system developed by Microsoft research is used to interact with objects onscreen without touching the phone at all and could particularly be useful for handset to control another device, whether a robot or a TV.
The Nintendo Wii and Microsoft's Xbox Kinect suggest that gestures could replace keyboards and touch screens for some of the interactions. Better multi-touch support, along with accurate voice input, could make physical keyboards almost redundant. Swype's technology, designed to work across a variety of connected devices, allows the users to glide a finger across the virtual keyboard to spell words, rather than tap out each letter.
Dash 7, an RFID-based wireless sensor networking technology, is expected to be ubiquitous in smartphones and other connected devices. Dash 7 would co-exist with NFC and would enable smartphones to be used as credit card, identity/security card, etc. Nokia is an early adopter of this technology and it is certain that Google and Apple phones will carry NFC/Dash 7 shortly.
Improving battery life through energy harvesting is another area with high potential for innovation. Nokia has developed a prototype that draws energy from radio waves emitted by antennas, TV masts and Wi-Fi transmitters. Nokia recently filed a patent for Kinetic energy-based phone batteries that allow the device to be partly powered by the user's movements. Solar-powered smartphones are slowly picking up. Sharp recently announced a solar-powered phone for the Japan market. Samsung and LG are also active in this space.
The future of smartphones is certainly bright in the “Connected Devices” universe and will be stimulated by constant innovation, both in hardware and software, providing a truly converged and enriching user experience.
The author is Director- Engineering, Teleca Software Solutions India. Views expressed are personal
