I did a little talk reminiscing on what was hot at this year’s Mobile World Congress, the mobile extravaganza in Barcelona. One of the show’s highlights was BlackBerry’s hyper-connected Porsche (See here for disclaimers) of which you’ll find a video here. Now, that car makes the most of the combination of powerful mobile-connected devices, protocols like NFC or Near-Field Communication and next-generation mobile networks (such as LTE), which deliver data bandwidth by far surpassing our relatively shoddy 3G data through-puts of today.
I also had a meeting with the good folks from Adidas who used their miCoach in-shoe chip to do some nifty stuff with the data so produced (video here). Adidas takes this one step further in that the performance of your chosen player in an accompanying mobile game. For the time being, this has to make do with a clunky accessory to your otherwise oh so smart phone. But, alas, these days are numbered thanks to the next generation of connectivity coming up right now. Apple’s latest (both phone and tablet) support the next Bluetooth standard, which would be version 4.0 (as opposed to “new”), and that is actually a huge step forward (considering how ickle it all is) and has understandably got its fair share of press recently. Here’s why:
Bluetooth 4.0 (full specs here), which comes as a “system in a package” has no noticeable impact on battery life of peripherals, which means you could effectively run your external keyboard or, perhaps more importantly to some, heart-rate monitor, on the same battery charge for the lifetime of the device. Oh, and it always handles NFC on top. The new standard handles up to 26 Mbps data throughput (compared to 2 Mbps for the older standards) although this is lower in the above-hailed low-energy mode.
All this put together creates potential for solutions that may not make for head-turning cool gadgets at tech conferences but they are things my mom might use: Just pair your phone with WiFi by touching in using an NFC chip (she could not find the settings for this if her life depended on it), use it for any type of fitness-related stuff, hook up any type of wireless device with the settings of, say, your car (probably with seamless handover of content, preferences, playlists, etc, too). Last but not least, the full range of healthcare all of sudden becomes a whole lot less geeky and a whole lot more accessible to normal people (which often was the problem with “modern” stuff: they worked well if you had an engineering degree or an unhealthy appetite for anything that smelled remotely geeky but was utterly unusable for anyone else). And for the geeks of you, there will always be the under-counter coffee-making faucet that you could then arguably also power using the hyper-connectedness of the brave new world.
So, interconnectedness is just about to enter the mainstream and that, dear friends, was the news of the week for me in Barcelona.
Funny old world this. I haven’t written about operators for a while until last week. And here I am again. They seem to be coming in pairs…
Anyway, there were reports today on an initiative of the four Swedish mobile network operators, namely Telia, Tele2, Telenor and 3. They formed a joint venture (with the witty name 4T), which will deliver (not directly but via PayEx and Accumulate) a unified mobile wallet to at least 97% of all Swedish subscribers on launch.
Older services such as Gallerie in France and Payforit in the UK never really hit it, as ME points out, arguably because of the use of WAP (*shiver*), which was the only available carrier for such services at the time. This time around, it will all be different, we hear, with all handsets from 2006 onwards being supported. The one thing that is not so clear is the technology used… The system is apparently ready for NFC (which I find uber-exciting).
What will be more exciting to users than some tech stats is the fact that the system will be able to handle online, peer-to-peer and man-to-machine transactions (presumably also for women). So rather than with cash or cards, you will be able to pay with your mobile (something predicted by Forbes’ #1 mobile influencer, Tomi Ahonen, for years of course).
The service will also have the same look-and-feel (and the same name!) irrespective of the carrier, which will do a lot to instill consumer trust (as well as avoiding to erect any unnecessary barriers to switch carriers).
All in all, very exciting and indeed commendable!
Here’s this week’s Carnival of the Mobilists (its 201st iteration in fact). This week, the Carnival is hosted over at Phil Barrett’s Burning the Bacon blog, and he has lots of goodies to share, including my own post showing an example of why Nokia struggles. Besides this, you will find posts on:
- Android-based tablets
- Droid taking out a bite on RIM (or will it?)
- a nice post on the ubiquity of SMS and
- NFC (near-field communication for you ignorant ones…
Go now and give it a good read. You’ll find the carnival here.
This could finally be the call for true M-Commerce: an impressive list of the silverback gorillas in mobile have apparently agreed to cooperate on NFC (near field communication). Nokia, Samsung and LG from the OEM side, Mastercard on the payment side and a whole raft of large carrier groups, including China Mobile, Vodafone, Cingular, Orange, Telefonica, O2, SFR, SKT, KPN, and WIND signed up. Since the chips are being provided by NXP (formerly Philips Semiconductors) and Sony, it may be expected that Sony Ericsson will also sign up.
This group could finally have enough muscle to push this technology into the market and solve the chicken-and-egg problem: only when a critical mass of handsets is equipped with the technology will it be attractive for vendors and service providers to equip their retail outlets, etc with the respective technology. The three handset makers now committed together represent nearly half of the entire market, which should give this a good push.
So, besides catching the London Tube and buying a Coke, you might also be able to download the latest games, applications and tunes to your phone, always paying by coolly waving your phone and quickly entering a PIN. Bright future…
