Opinion: 2008 Symbian Smartphone Show to open floodgates to smartphone innovaton

Opinion: 2008 Symbian Smartphone Show to open floodgates to smartphone innovaton

• Opportunities to develop feature-rich applications for smart phones will be discussed and developed
• Service providers will start to develop more applications and services on multiple smart phone handsets
• Wireless systems integration converged platform opportunities will materialize such as pre-defined applications for smart phone developers to use
• Alliances among various smart phone industry players will coalesce
• Technologies and applications will be developed to help reach and benefit more users of wireless handsets powered by smart phones.

The reason this year's event offers such unusual promise stems from a recent game-changing decision led by Nokia and key ecosystem players, in June of this year. Nokia announced the establishment a non-profit Symbian Foundation based on the Symbian Ltd. operating system that runs on smart phones. The Foundation creates a Symbian-based open mobile software platform available to a wide range of industry players. In spirit and practice, this Foundation will foster more widespread and creative convergence of wireless applications and services on smart phones.

In addition to these Symbian Foundation opportunities, this year's show will be a place to track several other important trends and issues associated with the mobile computing industry, which includes the Symbian operating system platform. These trends include:

Unified-memory-as-a service
Wireless broadband and Web 2.0 will be significant drivers of mobile usage in the years to come. At the same time, rich multimedia experiences enabled by wireless broadband will put a huge strain on memory capabilities of a typical mobile phone. In a world where consumers of content are also its creators, unified-memory-as-a-service will become more widely used. This upward usage trend will provide remote memory capacity accessed over the wireless Internet. Users will be able to create and use remote memory from the device of their choice. And this memory will operate no differently than if it were located within the users' own device.

Mobile surface computing
Surface computing enables users to interact with objects or content, manipulating information via natural and intuitive hand movements without a keypad or stylus. This new technology promises to revolutionize many industries, particularly mobile handsets. The screens of today's devices are already electronic. But with surface computing, all surfaces will become electronic and interactive, creating disruptive transformation in the way mobile devices deliver user experience. For example, you can take a picture using the phone camera. Then, using your two fingers, you can drag two corners of that image outward to zoom in on it. You place the phone on the surface computing table top. And all recent pictures pour out of the mobile phone onto the table top screen. This creates a more intuitive, visual user experience to indicate that the pictures were downloaded.

Widgets as the new mobile user interface
Widgets are self-contained, portable chunks of software that users can install and use quickly and easily on their desktops, set-top boxes or mobile phones. Widgets will evolve into an end-to-end framework that enable mobile device users to define and personalize their Internet data. Personalized delivery of information and capabilities using widgets, such as a widget functioning as a virtual personal assistant, will also become more widely used.

Application-driven connectivity
Mobile connectivity is a complex proposition. In the current wireless world, many different technologies--from 2G to 3G to 3.5G to 4G--coexist. Currently, Unlicensed Mobile Access is the communications standard that makes these technologies work together. IP connectivity will span multiple access technologies, and applications will make real time decision, driven by quality of service (QOS) considerations, as to which access technology to use and for what purpose. This technology will also choose which particular route that data should take over difficult pathways to deliver a compelling Internet experience to the user. For example, users can launch a video conferencing session with chat, document sharing, and a white board. Each of these applications can decide the radio channel best suited for that application. As a result, multiple radio channels will be active and result in parallel data processing for the user, creating enhanced quality of service.

Mobile Content Management
Advanced mobile content management systems would have end-to-end frameworks that embed rules and regulations about content and usage at different control points in mobile computing systems. These frameworks will help to tame the "Wild West" environment of content generation among mobile users, while also helping protect them. The control points can be a mobile phone, base stations, routers, switches, gateways and so on. Rules and regulations will be enforced through technology in various situations based on context. For instance, a financial institution may have a facility to disable the camera within a mobile phone so that no unauthorized pictures can be taken as long as the phone is in that premises.

Unified user profiles
Profile management services, aided by biometric technologies such as fingerprint, iris scan or voice print identification, will be available in products, enabling users to create a single profile on a mobile device that can be used across various subscriptions and devices. This will allow users to retain personal data while shifting services easily from one device or service provider to another without having to create personal profiles every time.

Mobile security gets serious
As the world of mobile computing expands, security will encompass infrastructure and corporate data, with mechanisms and services in place to detect and recover from attacks. Mobile security will also extend to end-user devices and user data and become a key aspect of quality of service for which users will pay. There will be a collaborative effort by each player in the mobile value chain to make security more effective. New security systems will assess threats and risks in real time and adopt appropriate security mechanisms to counter such threats. The anti-virus and vaccines industry will also get into the action.

The wireless industry goes green
The mobile industry is highly proactive in its efforts to reduce the carbon footprint. As such, design and development of ecosystem-friendly and sustainable mobile devices will become increasingly essential. This will become obligatory to conform to norms (driven by governments and increasingly aware end-users), and make good business sense.

The future is mobile
Mobile devices are becoming richer in functionality, and the relevant technologies will continue to provide almost unlimited potential, plus an easier, more unified user experience. Wireless companies will continue to accelerate towards achieving high-performance by improving their abilities to provide innovative, value-added mobile services. And the mobile device will likely replace computers and TVs as the electronic device most central to peoples' lives.

About the Author
Abhijit Kabra can be contacted at Abhijit,kabra@accenture.com