Primary Internet Device to be Mobile Phones by 2020

[Rocco Augusto]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/121508-pew-report.html' target='_blank'>http://www.networkworld.com/news/20...pew-report.html</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"The mobile phone &ndash; now with significant computing power &ndash; [will be] the primary Internet connection and the only one for a majority of the people across the world," the Pew Internet &amp; American Life Project writes in a new "Future of the Internet" report. "Telephony [will be] offered under a set of universal standards and protocols accepted by most operators internationally, making for reasonably effortless movement from one part of the world to another." </em></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/zt/auto/1229459585.usr8.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>This survey isn't too far from reality. From what I hear from all of my friends that have visited Japan in the last few years, this is something that is already taking place there. My friend Brad who recently just returned from a visit to Tokyo was describing to me in great detail how this older gentleman on the train was showing him a World of Warcraft-like MMO that is only playable from your phone and not a desktop computer. Even now with the release of devices like the HTC Touch HD, Apple iPhone and T-Mobile G1, users are ditching the laptops in favor of doing their casual browsing on these mobile devices. Heck, even I can't remember the last time I pulled my laptop out when I was watching TV and wanted to do some quick browsing during a commercial break. I would go as far as saying that these experts are more than a few years off and as mobile phone technology advances we might see a drastic turn to mobile web browsing as early as 2012 - if not earlier!</p>

[David Tucker]

2020? Well that's a really non-aggressive prediction :p

Sure...11 years from now I can see a phone sized device having so much power that it could act as essential a truly portable computer that you just can dock or use where ever you are. Desktops will still be pretty pervasive I think though since for true power you'll want one. Mobile tech still lags behind desktops and probably will unless we start using an entirely new technology.

[Rocco Augusto]

2020? Well that's a really non-aggressive prediction :p

Sure...11 years from now I can see a phone sized device having so much power that it could act as essential a truly portable computer that you just can dock or use where ever you are. Desktops will still be pretty pervasive I think though since for true power you'll want one. Mobile tech still lags behind desktops and probably will unless we start using an entirely new technology.

Heck, I think my 2012 guesstimate is a little generous. :D

[randalllewis]

I would not have thought this to be true even a year ago, but now I agree that it may become true well before 2020. I will give credit to Apple for significantly advancing the market for internet devices, but it was moving in that direction- just not as rapidly- without them.

I just acquired the Touch HD and and love the portable internet capability that a screen of that size and quality provides. I may have also finally reached the elusive "convergence" point because of the HD's standard headphone jack. I have listened to more music on the HD in a week than all my previous cell phones with their non-standard plugs combined.

[sundown]

Hmmm, yeah maybe but I'm skeptical. While I absolutely use my iPhone as my primary portable Internet device, it simply cannot displace my laptop on business trips, even if it was 10 times more powerful and had a battery that lasted 10 times as long. I can't see myself spending a lot of time on "websites" small enough to view on the relatively tiny screen and writing email on my iPhone is better than doing it on my cell phone but still a lot harder than my laptop. That's for internet use. I still see laptop and desktop use remaining prevalent for photo editing, video editing and non-portable gaming. As powerful as they'll be making portable devices, I can't imagine them surpassing or coming close to the power of the equivalent contemporary home PC. I don't know about you guys but I'm going the other way with my PC - BIGGER screens, more of them and lots more power. My iPhone, Pocket PC and internet-enabled cell phone all have their utility but none of them come close to taking over for my home PC or laptop.

[Pony99CA]

Hmmm, yeah maybe but I'm skeptical. While I absolutely use my iPhone as my primary portable Internet device, it simply cannot displace my laptop on business trips, even if it was 10 times more powerful and had a battery that lasted 10 times as long. I can't see myself spending a lot of time on "websites" small enough to view on the relatively tiny screen and writing email on my iPhone is better than doing it on my cell phone but still a lot harder than my laptop. That's for internet use.
I agree with you, but read the original piece again carefully. It said the mobile phone would be the primary Internet connection, not the primary viewing device. With high enough upload/download speeds, maybe we could go mobile for the connection.

Like you, though, I can't see sitting at a desk browsing the Internet on a phone-sized screen and trying to type on a limited keyboard. However, if they create a good docking station or companion (like the Celio Redfly that's slightly larger and includes better support for USB devices), it might be my primary connection and mobile device. (Either that, or a foldable or virtual display and thought input mechanism.)

However, while consumers might go this way, I can't see businesses doing it. Anybody who works in an office will still likely have a regular PC with a wired or wireless LAN connection. The one exception might be if they give employees a company-owned phone, but then the workers would have to carry two phones around.

Steve

[SteveHoward999]

I've posted numerous times in various places over the years that I think we are heading towards our mobile devices being the entire computer in our lives. We'll be able to use whatever interface devices are convenient -big monitors, standard keyboard or small netbook-like interfaces like the Redfly (www.celiocorp.com) or any other kind of interface you care to dream up. The mobile device will have all the computing power and storage space we need, or just fast access to a home base, but we'll use that mobile device anywhere, with the ubiquity of a credit card, without removing it from our pockets. Proximity with interface devices (screens, keyboards) will be enough.

And don't forget cool things like these wearable 'screens'

http://www.microvision.com/wearable_displays/index.html

I am so pleased to be living in these times :-D

[Rob Alexander]

I have a sense that we're missing the main point of these numbers. When they say 'for a majority of people across the world' we have to remember that the vast majority of people in the world do not live in developed countries. In developing countries with relatively poor telephony infrastructure, cell phones have already come into places that couldn't afford to install landlines. In those places, the cell phone will also be the main conduit to the Internet, whether or not it is also the viewing device. In developed countries, people will be slower to give up their fast cable or fibre-based Internet connections in favor of slower 3G-type connections. We'll continue to expand our options and will interact with the Net on an increasingly wide variety of devices (like the current move toward netbooks for casual surfing and email, etc.), but cell phones won't replace fast wired connections anytime soon in places with the infrastructure to support the wire.

[Rocco Augusto]

There was some talk not to long ago about Verizon and AT&T Wireless launching their respective LTE networks by 2012, which in theory should drastically increase our cellular data speeds. Cellular data technology will just keep getting faster as time goes on and it is not unreasonable that by 2020 that cellular networks will be amazingly fast and so widespread that we might not need to have separate data connections for home and mobile and we'll just be able to use our devices as mobile modems.

[getdonovan]

...Like you, though, I can't see sitting at a desk browsing the Internet on a phone-sized screen and trying to type on a limited keyboard. However, if they create a good docking station or companion (like the Celio Redfly that's slightly larger and includes better support for USB devices), it might be my primary connection and mobile device. (Either that, or a foldable or virtual display and thought input mechanism.)


I think something to think about is that the paradigm for consuming information is changing altogether when it comes to mobility. I think it will be about where, when and what kind of information users consume based on location and convenience.

I am thinking the model for sitting at a desk or on a couch with a laptop still qualifies as "mobile" and will remain, but there will also be more specific consumption of data, in the field, on demand as it pertains to a specific task. A lot more! Furthermore, I think with regard to mobility, it is important to note that "consumption" of data will be more prevalent than "contribution" because, as noted, there are still some usability issues for rapid and easy entry of large quantities of content. But, the minute you need information about something, you will be able (and currently are able in many respects) to get that info whether on a mobile device. In the coming years it may become easier, realistic and interoperably possible to consume info on a larger device connected to a smaller device as a conduit. Not quite there with standards for that yet, and simplicity of use is key to this concept taking hold.

But back to my point and to sum up: many small, sporadic and specific mobile tasks and applications, spread over a whole lifestyle will take over the the model of stationary, "do it all your tasks or leisure consumption while you have a laptop or desktop in front of you". Know what I mean?

I wrote a little bit about this concept at the blog I write for recently. I am glad to see these kind of posts and conversations popping up more and more.
http://mobilitysite.com/2008/12/iphone-users-shifting-away-from-laptops-says-rubicon/

[Pony99CA]

But back to my point and to sum up: many small, sporadic and specific mobile tasks and applications, spread over a whole lifestyle will take over the the model of stationary, "do it all your tasks or leisure consumption while you have a laptop or desktop in front of you". Know what I mean?
Sure, but I was taking issue with the "only" part of the statement "the primary Internet connection and the only one for a majority of the people across the world". Mobile connections may become the primary ones in the developed world, but I doubt they'll become the only ones -- unless companies start embracing universal telecommuting.

Even then, unless reseearchers stop developing wired communications method because wireless has essentially caught up in speed, there will still be a need for faster connections in some places.

There will also be a need for large viewing areas. For example, viewing a spreadsheet with even moderate complexity is best done on a large monitor, not a PDA or phone screen. Similarly, unless our storage media make quantum leaps and our desire to store things doesn't, there will be the need for larger storage devices. SD cards have only gone from 2 GB in 2005 or so to 16 GB in 2008, a factor of 8. By 2020, that means SD cards might get to 64 TB (4096 times larger), but we'll likely also want to store full-length HD movies (or maybe holomovies) on those (so about 1,000 movies). Will that be enough?

Those issues don't invalidate the original point, of course, because the mobile phone could be the primary or only connection for a majority of the world. It just won't be for the whole world, I don't think.

Steve

[Macguy59]

I seem to be moving more in that direction myself. My entire family seems to think I have the keys to Google magic. More often than not I only have my smartphone with me when they call and ask me to do a search. In the past when I used WM based devices I would usually wait until I got back to a computer to do the search. It's not that they weren't capable of the search but mobile IE was painfully slow and the screen too small. With the 3G I don't hesitate to do the search immediately. When at home most of my email is done via the 3G (via sudo push). For it to become my primary way of being on the net, broadband like speed needs to be a 24/7 anywhere anytime thing.

[Kirkaiya]

2020? Well that's a really non-aggressive prediction :p

Sure...11 years from now I can see a phone sized device having so much power that it could act as essential a truly portable computer that you just can dock or use where ever you are. Desktops will still be pretty pervasive I think though since for true power you'll want one. Mobile tech still lags behind desktops and probably will unless we start using an entirely new technology.

Yah, they really went out on a limb there with the 2020 prediction :rolleyes:

But I disagree about desktops being pervasive through 2020; given the incredible increases in bandwidth, and the trend towards having the heavy-lifting processing done by servers (lately virtualized in "clouds"), I don't think that most, or even many people will have much need for intensive local processing.

In the next 12 - 18 months, we'll see mobiles with 1080p rendering ability, and 3D graphics acceleration in mobile hardware is already going quickly. I can imagine scenarios like Rocco said - where people pop their mobile device into a "media dock" at home, which has advanced multi-media hardware for 3D gaming and so on. Even more likely, it won't need a HW dock at all, but will be able to use whatever screen/keyboard/mouse it's near.

For apps like word-processing, spreadsheets, email, LOB apps, even software development evironments (thing "Bungee"), there won't be any noticable difference running it remotely, not when Verizon's FiOS is already slated to go 100 Mbps by 2010. By 2020, I'm guessing that we'll have at least 1 - 10 Gbps residential speeds. Hell, Google Docs is already pretty responsive even for me, in Thailand, on my 2.5 Mbps connection. At 1 Gbps, I could play any of today's FPS games, with all the rendering done remotely, and the video just streamed to my local display (there have been demos of this tech done already).

So anyway - I think most desktops will go the way of the CRT monitor. Laptops will be very thin and light, and given the ability to off-load processing to the cloud, their CPUs will be power-optimized (as in, optimized for long battery-life).

That's my prognostication, anyway ;-)