Phones with a silver lining

Today we might be mulling over which OS will prevail and why. But operators are building faster and better realtime wireless connections and the question now is, what will become of the phone once we have reliable always-on broadband internet in a few years from now with speeds that are comparable to fast wired broadband today?

the Unliquited by Samsung

Source: walyou.com > http://bit.ly/hINPrM

We might be oblivious today to the fact that 20 years ago internet still required a dial-up modem. Speeds we're indicated in kBps and connections were primarily a-synchronous. 'Always-on' was on nobody's radar. Today we might complain about bad voice connection when calling from a mobile phone and about the fact that you are 'degraded' to an Edge connection from 3G when you are in very busy areas. But this is changing ehr well, fast.


Extrapolating the past to the future we will have wireless mobile internet at above 3G speeds even when flying. And in a few years from now we'll have that against flat rates that will not surpass our current landline phone bills...


Let that sink in for a minute. This means that having access to cloud based services will become a commodity. Now let's think one step further... Last year the so called Netbook was hot. Although the enthusiasm has subdued a bit, there is still much to like about a computer that doesn't do much more than providing you with a powerful access to services that live on the web, or actually in the cloud.


From there it will be a matter of time before we'll have phone software that lives in the cloud. A phone that we access from any device that offers highspeed broadband internet. After identification we can use 'our' phone over an internet connection anywhere, taking away the headache caused by  OS upgrades and phone content back-ups. Sounds weird? Just look at SAAS models eating into the space previously owned by Microsoft Office at a steady speed. 


What this will do to the business of phone manufacturers is still anybody's guess. It will sure be a different business model for the likes of Nokia, HTC and Samsung, not to mention Apple. Looking at the speed of developments however I am sure that it will not be a matter of IF but more when.