Future of Mobile phones

jesus_thats_gre

Hi All

This is fairly open but I thought it might be interesting...

What do you see as the future of mobile phones.. Whats happening with screen technologies, cameras, operating systems and so on...

Are Nokia dropping behind the competition technology wise, they seems to be lagging behind the likes of the Sharp/Vodafone handsets. The Gx20 and upcoming Gx30 really seems to be leading the field. The Gx20's screen really is a step above anything available in Europe and is improved upon even further for Asian markets. The gx30 is going to have the 200k+ colour screen and is going to intergrate a megapixel camera. The Gx40 is rumored to be a 2 megapixel camera and is supposedly going to be a 3G phone and will possibly be launched the end of the Summer.

The battle between the Nokia led Symbian OS and Microsofts Windows Mobile OS, how important is this going to be? Who will win?

Add anything you want or have heard...

Thanks

Emmo

While we may be getting more and more data driven products and advacements in these fields revenues are still predominantly voice based.

I think that perhaps you will start to see phones which are more PDA orientated but without the need for a screen.

Perhaps with some kind of Bluetooth headset for a screen for the data driven applications.

Phones by their nature are voice based communication devices. They are no computers.

However I think we will see more computers users using the mobile networks for internet access. Quite soon.

Emmo

TheSonOfBattles

There's a sci-fi program called Earth: Final Conflict, and in it everyone has a little tubular thing, that you can pull a see through, wafer thin, flexible screen out of that acts as a video phone, computer, camera, video camera. The works basically. I'd say eventually we may see something like that tbh.

Civilian_Target

Who knows where we'll be in 10 years time, but in the next 5 years I would expect to see phones become mobile internet devices, hopefully using symbain, which will probably win out because its a lot less resource intensive then WinCE.

I would also expect MP3 players to become standard on phones (same as cameras have), they have far too much in common for this not oto happen.

As for companies, Nokia is in big trouble if they don't turn around soon, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if they become part of Samsung. Siemens will take over the budget / pay as you go market. Contracts will become more the norm than pay as you go because of mobile internet. Motorola will make a stunning new return and the top manufacturers will be Sony, Motorolla and Samsung.

Thats my 2c anyway, time will probably prove me wrong but at least I have it in writing. Like the computer, I expect phones in 5 years time will just be an evolution of what we have today.

clopd

I'd like to understand a bit more why Civilian_Target thinks that contract is going to be more popular than pay-as-u-go in the Mobile Data world given that about 70% of Ireland's mobile users have a pay as you go phone.

If you really want to know whats going to happen in the Mobile world in the next few years then you should be heading down to Cannes in the south of France this week as there is a major annual GSM Congress there.

Check out http://www.3gsmworldcongress.com/congress/

BigMoose

It's an interesting question and one I've been thinking about recently. With the launch of the GX30 and my current purchace of an mp3 player you wonder when all these devices will truely be in one unit. For anyone seriously into digital photography phone cams currently aren't close. Likewise for mp3 (assume there's not one with a 20G disk?).

The PDA side is strange, there have been built in PDA/phones for a while now but never seem to catch the mass market. I guess they are always vastly more expensive than other good phones that people who already have a good enough phone and want a PDA buy a separate unit.

The user interface on this Samsung 3G phone is poor compared to a Nokia, but the 6650 in all other respects is an awful phone. The Samsung is certainly a nice handset but isn't as easy to use... But it's early days in the 3G market and I'm sure Nokia will sooner or later get their act together.

I guess if you are trying to buy "the best" mp3 player, digital camera, mobile phone etc it's harder to find all the features you want in one bit of kit instead of getting exactly what you want in separates...

TheSonOfBattles

Originally posted by BigMoose
With the launch of the GX30 and my current purchace of an mp3 player you wonder when all these devices will truely be in one unit. For anyone seriously into digital photography phone cams currently aren't close. Likewise for mp3 (assume there's not one with a 20G disk?).

Tbh, a phone wouldn't need a 20GB hdd to get up to date with todays mp3 players. Only a few like the iPod have that kinda memory capacity, and they're massive because of it. Take a look at things like the mini iPod, and joint memory sticks/mp3 players and you get a better idea of what a phone should be aiming for. Even a 512kb memory space will fit on a few albums worth of songs. Most phones though only have a few kb of memory, and rely on memory cards etc. to boost memory capacity. It'll be a few more years before phones have enough inbuilt memory to be able to compete with dedicated mp3 players though tbh.

As for Nokia, they're on the down ward slide, and I don't think they're gonna pull themselves out of it tbh. This is just a half informed view though, so don't take it seriously.

jesus_thats_gre

I agree with your sentiments about Nokia, I think Nokia know it too. Its blatantly obvious Nokia are repositioning themselves away from being solely a handset provider, to being an entertainment company (N-Gage anyone) and a software company (majority shareholding of the Symbian OS).

Emmo

People will not carry music around with them. They will stream it from their own homes or 3rd party services. Expect all telco's to start to offer unmetered access quite soon over 3g and 4g it will be the norm.

Emmo

Rabies

Originally posted by TheSonOfBattles
There's a sci-fi program called Earth: Final Conflict, and in it everyone has a little tubular thing, that you can pull a see through, wafer thin, flexible screen out of that acts as a video phone, computer, camera, video camera. The works basically. I'd say eventually we may see something like that tbh.

all ready here.... well sort of... link from news.bbc.co.uk

TheSonOfBattles

Originally posted by Rabies
all ready here.... well sort of... link from news.bbc.co.uk

I think I just had a mini orgasm

Seriously though, it may be mono-chromatic, and have only a 1 second refresh rate (AAAHHHH!!! My eyes!!!), but I still want one now dammit. :cool: