Alex I was just about to post the same link. It's an excellent article on where wireless phones are going in the near future. Certainly there's a lot of work being established to make incredibly powerful phones that will be Internet devices.
One thing seemed clear to me after reading this article and that is it will take several years to establish a truly functional system. I believe the key to the problem is bandwidth and interface. Currently we're looking at 9600 bps which is a limiting factor. Build out of higher speed networks will take time. Also, the interface is still limited to a few lines on grayscale background.
I believe the key to making these devices work is a hybrid combination of voice user interface and graphic user interface. It's so obvious. I wish the New York Times had developed this angle a little bit. They spent so much time looking at hardware features on new phones without really examining systems that use existing phones and will provide great enabling factors to the coming phones of the future.
Anyway hears the paragraph that mentions General Magic.
Also at the Demo Mobile Conference this week, General Magic, a software company in Sunnyvale, Calif., unveiled a "voice agent" application that can, for instance, be used to bid for items at an online auction site from a cellular phone using voice commands. The service will be available later this summer.
Here's another point discussed in the article where they mention Motorola's plans to work with Netscape and Nextel. I wonder if this will detract from General Magic's potential dealings with Netscape? They don't mention Motorola's Mysphere, but it would seem like a strong complementary product.
Summer is also the rollout period for a new crop of phones from Motorola. The i1000 Plus model will be available in six cities on the Nextel digital cellular network by the end of the year. It will integrate a digital phone, an alphanumeric pager, a two-way radio, an e-mail device and a microbrowser into a five-ounce cellular phone. It will cost around $250.
When set in Net mode, the Motorola phone fires up the Unwired Planet microbrowser and takes the user to a Web portal maintained by Netscape and Nextel. That portal sends customized information -- snippets of weather or financial news or stock quotes -- to the phone.
Regards, Mark
PS This article was also interesting. nytimes.com |
