Mobile technology has been experiencing phenomenal growth in recent years. Though, we still call it a "mobile" from habit, today mobile phone is an organiser, entertainment device, payment device, and so much more. Worldwide, there are now two billion mobile phones, of which 810 million mobile phones were shipped in 2005 alone - this is a 14% jump than 2004. By 2010, there would be 3 billion mobile phones. Close to a trillion GSM text messages are carried globally, of which an estimated 25 per cent are forwarded. There are more mobile cameras sold than digital cameras, more music/video players in mobiles than iPods.

In my view, the forces that are driving the adoption of mobile services are: improved quality of handsets, increased access speed, diversity and growth in available mobile content, simpler methods of mobile payment, and greater clarity on the costs of accessing the mobile internet.
 

The United States has always remained as the global innovator, especially in consumer electronics. However, for a variety of reasons, mobile media is developing far faster outside of North America. Mobile phone hardware and mobile Internet services are much farther advanced in other countries.

Japan continues to be a key innovator in this field. The leader of the mobile media revolution is a company called DoCoMo. This firm responded to the shortcomings of Japanese Internet services (i-mode) by setting up an exceptional mobile Internet operation. The i-mode revolutionized the mobile Internet in Japan, offering email, web-browsing and e-wallets. Japanese users of the mobile Internet count in the tens of millions. Close to half of all of Japan's mobile phone users operate 3G phones and work is underway on 4G technologies that permit even greater use of audio-visual and interactive video services.

What are the most promising technologies that would be used for mobile connectivity?

In the future, very fast and efficient movement of data will be facilitated by a combination of Bluetooth and the new Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology. Bluetooth brings an established, accepted technology for low power connectivity, while UWB provides an extremely fast data transfer rate, enabling new applications requiring large but brief wireless transfers, such as downloading video.

It is estimated by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) that there will be nearly a billion Bluetooth-enabled devices deployed by the end of 2006—and the rate of adoption is increasing.

The speed of the Bluetooth technology is fairly slow by today’s standards. Wi-Fi and 802.11 are developing standards that will allow that technology to reach in excess of 120Mb/s. Today, a current Bluetooth device will go is fast as 3Mb/s. This is appropriate for audio streaming, but not nearly enough for heavy data-oriented applications like video.

Will there be new killer applications in mobile phones?

The global mobile industry now generates more than a trillion dollars in revenue. It has for several years been seeking a new killer application. Mobile Internet, machine-to-machine communications and multimedia messaging are just some of the new services that the mobile sector has tried to popularize.

One of the latest, greatest hopes of the industry is mobile television. Companies have invested significant sums in developing mobile television services so far. In 2007, as in 2006, the relative difference in viewing area between a typical mobile phone and an average television is likely to become ever greater. Mobile phones are unlikely to get larger; the need for portability implies that devices must remain both lightweight and physically compact. The screen size of a high-end mobile phone is limited to about two inches if measured diagonally. Compare that with the typical size of a television now selling in the United States, which is a 32-inch screen44 with a surface area of 448 inches. The bigger televisions become, the harder it will be to convince consumers to watch television on a phone.

As the ability of mobile phones to capture video content steadily improves, driven by better cameras and ever larger memory cards, the volume of user-generated, video content requiring transmission from the mobile phone is growing. And for the mobile operator, this translates into the potential to generate data revenues.

Hence, operators should ensure that mobile-phone user interfaces make it as easy as possible for the user to upload video via the network. Every additional click required to send the video could be losing a potential customer.

Today, in developed countries, mobile networks typically cover 99 percent of the population, and more than 80 percent of the world’s total population live within their coverage. Partly because of its ubiquity, mobile is likely to consolidate its position as the primary network for voice calls 2007, with mobile voice traffic forecast to exceed land line traffic in many developed countries. As a result, many of the fixed voice services used in homes and offices are expected to undergo sharp decline.

By 2015, mobile operators may carry as many as eight trillion voice minutes per annum, representing more than 60 percent of the total voice market. Mobile data use has also moved indoors, a trend expected to continue in 2007.

Governments should give tax incentives to promote mobile phone usages because mobile connectivity is a key driver of economic progress and productivity.

There is also a social dimension. Like digital divide, there is actually a mobile divide, which refers to those with and those without basic mobile phone connectivity, typically used for voice services. In the coming years, the mobile divide should diminish, as millions of new subscribers get connected every month, principally in developing countries. However, at the same time, the divide will increase more in terms of those with and those without access to Internet connectivity via mobile at a quality sufficient to support a widening range of applications.