Update (2/2/2009): One more mobile technology to add.

This week, Gartner published a fantastic report on 8 Mobile Technologies to Watch in 2009 and 2010. Before you read our comments, you should probably read the abstract from Gartner first.

gartner

Hit the link for our comments on these 8 mobile technologies.

  1. Bluetooth 3.0 – this would enable new types of peripherals that take advantage of the increased bandwidth. We are not super hot on this one, as many peripherals already have all the bandwidth that they need. Adoption of Bluetooth 3.0 will be slow if there are no compelling peripherals that people need.

  2. Mobile User Interface – we agree about this one. The iPhone revolutionized the mobile user interface, and other software/device makers are learning from that. Already, Android and the Palm Pre sport very modern mobile UI that was not seen just 1 or 2 years ago. But in addition to mobile user interface, we think hardware form factors will also be a technology to watch.
  3. Location Sensing – ABSOLUTELY. Location-based services, location-awareness and location everything is arguably the hottest area of mobile software/services innovation. Just look at the finalists from the Android Developer Challenge last year and you will see location-based apps dominate the charts. 
  4. 802.11n – this one has less to do with smartphones, but more to do with enterprise wireless network deployments. 802.11n will not make a big impact at home until broadband Internet access dramatically speeds up. Right now, Comcast offers average of 6Mbps service to most homes and 802.11g is already at 54 Mbps. There is not much point to get 802.11n when the bottleneck is the connection to your Internet service provider. Of course, if wireless networking between different devices takes off, like streaming HD contents to TV, then 802.11n might be more useful.
  5. Display Technologies – we agree with innovations that are likely in the area of passive displays, like e-ink, as adoption for e-readers continue to grow. But we are less sure of pico-projectors. Pico-projectors embedded inside phones is a neat idea, but it remains to be seen whether the customer demand is there. It seems to us that not enough people are road warrior types who will need to have a mobile projector with them everywhere they go, and it would make perfect sense to make pico-projectors as separate peripherals. Watch for OLED display innovations and applications on mobile phones instead.
  6. Mobile Web and Widgets – mobile operators love mobile web widgets because they want to install these widgets onto the heterogeneous set of devices they sell, to reduce application development cost. With the success of the iPhone App Store and other apps stores from Palm, RIM, Android and Microsoft, it’s difficult to see how web widgets will really gain traction. End-users seem to clearly indicate that they prefer native applications.
  7. Cellular Broadband – as demand for mobile data continues to grow, operators will need to keep up. 4G networks will start to roll in but it remains to be seen how the current economic conditions will impact expensive network upgrades.
  8. Near Field Communication – NFC has the potential to become how mobile payments are made. Gartner doesn’t expect NFC to be widely adopted for payments even in 2010, but we agree that this is a very interesting technology and application (in payments). Widespread adoption will happen sooner or later.

Please leave a comment if you have any thoughts on the above.

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