One of the initially unexpected events of the mobile market was the unexpected and extraordinary explosion of SMS messaging. Current figures indicate (2004) that the number of SMS messages now being sent world-wide is above 10 billion per month. This is an astonishing figure given that it approximates to 2 messages per month to every person on the planet. Of course that doesn’t give a clear picture of what is going on. What appears to be happening is that young mobile phone users, in the age range 15 to 25, are using SMS capability extensively sending each other messages at a rate of over 10 per day (10 percent of which, according to reports, say nothing more than “phone me”). On top of this, some web sites are providing SMS capability and sending messages giving news, sports scores and so on, directly to mobile phone numbers. This accounts for the traffic figures and their 100 percent growth over the last year.
When we try to identify the applications that drive major revolutions in computing, “killer applications” so to speak, we home in on useful capabilities that might become pervasive. At the beginning of the PC revolution, the killers apps were word processing and spreadsheets. Later the graphical capabilities of the GUI added presentations, desk top publishing and drawing to the mix. With the Internet revolution the killer applications were email, search engines (like Google and Yahoo), news and informational web sites and entertainment. In the latter category came pornography, which acted as a larger incentive to get onto the net than most people would like to admit.
So what has happened so far with the mobile revolution. Quite clearly as the SMS traffic shows, the early driver is messaging, which began as a paging capability but has quickly become “email by other means”. The reason for its popularity is simply that it is fast and gets to the individual, rather than to a device – or at least it will do if the individual carries a mobile phone around all the time as most users do. It is quite obvious that one of the next moves with messaging is its extension to have all the capability of email: sending messages to lists, adding attachments and so on. In addition, voice capabilities will be added, merging email and voice mail.
The other killer wireless applications are likely to come from the unique capability of the new medium, which if you ignore the fact that voice is central to the user interface, comes down to the fact that the mobile phone is carried around and can be used in most circumstances. Clearly this means that the mobile phone will absorb the capabilities of the PDA, as one or two models of phone have already done to some extent, but we can think of this in a different way.
Check Your Pockets
Examine everything that you carry with you on your person or sometimes carry with you. Most of these things can become mobile applications. Here is a fairly comprehensible list of examples:
- Watch: Consider a digital watch, which also acts as an alarm clock, gives world time and can be used as a stop watch (but rarely is). The mobile can easily do these things and using GPS could automatically adjust to local time.
- PDA: Addresses, calendar, expenses, email, alarms and all other PDA functions including data synchronization are possible.
- Keys: Given that locks are electronically controllable and wired to the internet, the mobile device can become a key to open any such lock using a personal key. With infrared or bluetooth an appropriately designed lock wouldn’t even need to be wired. This is a huge area of application.
- Remote devices: The mobile could easily usurp the role of the remote control for televisions, videos, sound systems and any other device with such an interface. This development would encourage other household goods (cookers, washing machines, etc.) to have such interfaces.
The contents of the wallet: In truth the whole contents of a wallet can be swallowed up by the mobile, we can consider them by category, as follows:
- Credit/Debit Cards, Money: Mobiles could implement or even usurp such payment mechanisms. Once electronic cash gets going it could store it and use it to make payments and could do so in any currency.
- Driving License and other ID Documents: This could include photograph as well as the usual information. A passport would also be possible on the same basis and also recording visas, entries/exits to/from various countries and other data that passport and customs authorities like to collect.
- Loyalty Cards: Clearly if it can do credit cards and passports, it can also do loyalty cards from airlines, supermarkets, petrol stations and so on.
- Membership Cards: Similarly it can store membership cards for professional associations, sports clubs, nightclubs, etc.
- Tickets: It could store tickets for theatre, cinema, trains and boats and planes or anything else for which tickets are used.
- Business cards: It can hold business card information and transfer it from one person to another.
- Receipts: It could be used to collect receipts for business expenses and for tax purposes.
- Personal effects: Other personal effects, such as photographs of wife, children, girlfriend, or whatever could be stored on the mobile device.
Naturally, all of the information items mentioned above would be protected by duplication somewhere on a secure server, but the mobile device could hold copies of them and present them in the appropriate situations.
Many of these items, keys, ID and payments in particular, are killer applications and would make the mobile device a vitally important and indispensable item in daily life. Notice how distinctly different these applications are from the killer applications of the PC or the Internet era. That is why mobile technology hails a revolution, and isn’t just an extension of the Internet.
