Cell phones are transforming the market. (LINK)
January 28th 2008 00:15
This article comes from signonsandiego.com. link attached. I have just included enough to get you thinking and know what the future in technology holds.
"In Silicon Valley, tech company owner Mohammed Khan buys his bagels with a wave of his specially equipped cell phone.
In Los Angeles, aspiring filmmaker Mike Hodgkinson uses his cell phone to shoot DVD-quality video, one of them for Rob Dickinson, former songwriter for indie band Catherine Wheel.
And in Italy, IT professional Robert Bernocco thumb-typed an entire 384-page sci-fi novel on his standard 12-button Nokia 6630 keypad during his daily train commute.
These days the gadget formerly known only for voice calls has mastered multitasking. Smarter phones lead an onslaught of wireless technologies creating the third revolution of modern electronics, following transformations wrought by the personal computer and the Internet.
The cell phone's worldwide conversion from voice device to high-tech Swiss Army knife includes contributions from engineers in San Diego at Qualcomm, Kyocera, LG Electronics and other telecom companies.
In the five years since manufacturers added high-speed data connections to mobile phones, they've offered music downloads, text messaging, cameras, keyboards and other gadgetry as potential “killer applications” – must-have features that would compel consumers to buy new phones.
How the cell phone is becoming the do-it-all device.
The United States has about 250 million cell phone subscribers – a number equal to 82 percent of the population – and many of them already embrace the cell phone's new roles:
Frequent business travelers use phone cameras to help remember which ubiquitous rental car they're driving and the number of the night's hotel room.
Some people have abandoned wallet photos of babies and pets and instead store slide shows on their phones.
Subscribers to some security systems can monitor things at home by downloading images from home video cameras to their mobile screens.
Earlier this month, Pizza Hut announced a system for customers to text message their orders, joining smaller competitor Papa John's Pizza. In September, Domino's launched a service that lets customers order from Web-enabled phones.
Parents subscribe to Global Positioning System services that track a child's location en route to and from school.
Wristwatch sales have slowed – down 25 percent for Timex between 2003 and 2005 – as teens and young adults tell time by their phones.
Schools struggle to rein in text-messaging teens and young adults, who chat electronically during class, sometimes as a high-tech way to cheat. Most San Diego County schools ban cell phone use in classrooms.
Steve Jones, a professor at University of Illinois at Chicago who writes about technology and culture, said he sees his students text, watch videos between classes and update MySpace pages with photos shot just moments earlier.
“Students are going to ... move into the work force and continue to use their technology,” Jones said. “It's the way of the future. I'd say we are now with the cell phone where we were at 10 years ago with the Internet.”
But an estimated 30 percent of camera phones never snap a picture. Many keyboards never send text messages.
“If you look at all the nonvoice features, you see very low penetration rates,” said Gartner analyst Michael King. “The iPhone changes that, certainly.”
In six months, Apple has sold 4 million iPhones, a device in which voice calls are secondary to features such as playing music, displaying videos and surfing the Web.
This month, Qualcomm showed prototypes of gadgets that are half phone/half laptop. Powered by the company's Snapdragon chip, they have 1 gigahertz of processing power – plenty of horsepower to run new applications or better versions of existing features, such as cameras with resolutions up to 12 megapixels.
Qualcomm Chief Operating Officer Sanjay Jha said the emerging generation of “pocketable devices” is defined more by always-on Internet connections than by the ability to make voice calls.
His company's new chips can support downloads of up to 7.2 megabits per second – comparable to many home high-speed Internet connections – as well as navigation systems capable of updating maps and giving traffic information through a connection to a data network.
Consumer demand for mobile data will grow when networks and devices can deliver the full experience, Jha said. “The problem today is that wireless, such as Wi-Fi, is not ubiquitous enough and broadband is not broadband enough,” he said.
Qualcomm envisions mobile devices with bigger screens than today's phones that would be capable of displaying GPS navigation and TV programming, including the company's MediaFLO broadcast programming and download services such as Verizon's V-Cast. The devices would be optimized for mobile commerce, with communications chips to execute credit card transactions and software to enable banking and shopping on the go.
There are three things that people have carried in their pockets for ages – keys, personal information and money – said Minnesota technology writer and futurist Jack Uldrich.
The cell phone has the potential to replace each of them, he said. Keyless entry is already common in autos and at businesses.
“Putting that (radio frequency identification) access into a phone to unlock your car and home is easy,” Uldrich said. “The transition to digital cash will take longer.”
Eventually, the phone could replace personal information such as driver's licenses, he said".
If you want more I suggest you use the link, but there is probably more than enough here for most people - geeks and non-geeks.
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