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Mobile Computing

Thu, 07/24/2008 - 14:25 — hirshon

Mobile Computing Will Overtake Personal Computing

Within the past decade mobile phone use exploded in countries that previously had little-or-no landline infrastructure. Today, even in developed countries many people are dropping their landlines in favor of going “mobile only.” Mobile computing has become more practical than ever before, and a challenge will be to optimize the use of such technologies to enable effective research.

There are a number of things that are happening in the m-computing environment that may well cause such a shift? In many respects, electronic services (e-services) are already becoming m-services. In the United States, for example, it is estimated that sales through mobile computing will soon generate 25% of all retail sales. Applications that previously were accomplished online (such as printing airline boarding passes) are also going mobile using 2D displays that permit high security scanning so that the phone display screen can be scanned at airports.

Today, there are 3.3 billion mobile subscribers worldwide, a number far greater than the number of Internet users. “The market research company Informa Telecoms said in a report … that about 50 million people, or about 2.3 percent of all mobile users, already use the cell phone for social networking, from chat services to multimedia sharing. The company forecast that the penetration rate would mushroom to at least 12.5 percent in five years.” This could be even more dramatic if mobile device broadband systems, such as Femtocell, take hold and provide extended broadband coverage via mobile computing.

Perhaps the most telling sign of the advances in mobile technology can be witnessed in the meteoric takeoff of the Apple iPhone. In less than twelve months since it release, the iPhone has already captured a significant portion of the U.S. mobile phone market, and it is making significant in-roads in Europe. A new survey by ChangeWave Research, indicated that “the next generation iPhone having a tsunami-like impact on the smart phone market” and that 56% of consumers who plan to buy a smartphone over the next 90 days say they’ll buy an iPhone, up from 29% who listed Apple’s device as their phone of preference in March.” Among current users, RIM’s Blackberry was the choice of 42% of buyers, Palm is down to 14% (from a high of 35% two years ago), and the iPhone is at 11%. Given the potential growth curve, “Going forward, RIM's share of consumer planned purchases is set to take a significant hit over the next 90 days, falling 6 pts to 23%. Palm remains a far distant third with just 3%.”

This explosion is being caused by the recent introduction of the second generation iPhone, the 3G, along with Apple’s release of a software development kit. Apple expects to sell 11 million 3G phones over the next five or six months. With this newly opened platform, the iPhone is set to take advantage of the same hobbyists and professions people who have been active in open source movement. Specialized applications, such as for libraries, will not be far away. Content providers are also looking for ways to optimize their content for the iPhone. For example, the Encyclopaedia Britannica has a new iPhone reference tool that features a comprehensive library of article and image content to provide users with access to over one million pages of content.

Other companies will not readily cede the market to Apple. For example, Google has its own mobile phone platform (operating system) called Android that it is marketing to other phone companies. Newer versions of Windows Mobile will also vie for attention. In five years what features will show up on these low cost phones? On the iPhone, people are doing Internet searches 50 times more than all the other U.S. carriers combined. When Internet access from other devices is added, this number skyrockets.

Therefore, the underlying technology for m-computing is changing rapidly. An important area of development are Mobile Internet Devices (MID). The Wall Street Journal noted that “MIDs are a loosely defined category that is generally applied to devices that are smaller than a laptop and larger than a cell phone that connect to the Internet wirelessly using either Wi-Fi or cellular data technologies.” The new Tegra MID chip from the Nvidia Corporation is described as a "computer on a chip" that will be particularly good for tasks such as watching videos and playing games on mobile devices. A device built around this chip is estimated to be able to play 26 hours of high-definition video on a single battery charge. Intel’s MID chip, Atom, has been selected for "30-plus" devices that will start hitting the market by the end of June 2008. Intel’s successor chip, due out by 2010, will draw one-tenth the power and offer more usage per battery charge. Adobe Systems recently announced an effort called the Open Screen Project to bring users consistent experiences with the company's software across PCs, cellphones, MIDs and other devices.

Perhaps not in every respect, but certainly in many, mobile phones will start to substitute for desktop and laptop computers. Movies are already converted for watching on smart phones and MP3 devices, and in Japan e-books not only are read on mobile phones but are being written on them.

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This page is part of the Environmental Scan, one of NELINET's Planning, Assessment & Accreditation Initiatives.

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