Never before has the technology expanded its outreach as it did in past couple of years. The SMS, Wii, smart connected devices and social networks have fueled technology adaption among the teens putting the American youth "almost" at par with Japan's and Europe's; and ahead in terms of mobile social networking. The government has rightly identified broadband as the key enabler for the applications and services. Broadband is the glue binding the tools which integrate all parts of a users life at one place; where banking, shopping, utilities /home appliance control, entertainment can travel with the person and controlled from a single device, I am not calling a smartphone, because mobility, data and web access are shared domains between smartphones, tablets, netbooks, notebooks, handheld gaming devices, eReaders, UMPCs, EMPCs, MIDs, PDAs etc etc. The phone just happens to be the most endearing of the personal gadgets because of its legacy voice application, but that may change with the almost arrived wireless bandwidths holding the promise to enable IP video and voice telephony on any computing device anywhere. Everything is going mobile, the cloud was yesterdays enabler, today is about the user experience and how to ride the cloud in style.
Here are the technologies that I know will rock my world in 2011.
Mobile Wallet:
The phone first took care of the Rolodex and rid the wallet of the contact book, but this one will take us a step further; no more carrying a fat wallet with an unbalanced gait. America is a laggard in mobile banking to the point where it is behind Eastern Europe in terms of mobile banking subscribers. Part of it is due to easier access to other tech avenues such as PC for banking than say LATM or Eastern blocks (which basically just jumped that phase of tech adaption straight to mobility), but it seems that the connecting technologies such as the NFC, mobile client security, and consumer acceptance along with the understanding between credit issuing, underwriting and clearing agencies have reached a critical mass where the carriers are about to get their wish and their thumbs in the credit value chain pie.
Unified Communication & IP Video Telephony:
Back in the days, about 7 years ago when I was working on the first phone that seamlessly moved a user cell call between WiFi and cellular networks, unified communication was a little known buzz word, but the time for UC has finally arrived and the users will soon have a one place and one ID for their IM, email, short message, voice and video; "unifying" their communication experience; not to overlook the separate components of IP video that is about to make video calling a norm.
Personal shopping Systems:
These have not yet taken off, part because of integration issues with different components and technologies promoted by different stakeholders, and part because of consumer reluctance to its value proposition in saving them time and money. But I believe that the bigger pipes of 3G and now 4G (LTE and WiMax), augmented reality apps along with mobile devices that can scan / download coupons and pay are allowing consumers to run instant checks and checkouts while in the aisle like never before; the increasing user comfort with their personal devices as shopping assistants will also advance the in house loyalty driven department/grocery store PSSs.
Virtual Reality:
Augmented reality, motion sensing, and voice recognition have come to age in Kinect and Wii. Virtual confererences are getting popular, but the day is not far where one instead of dry browsing an item as in touching it with a mouse cursor or a finger tip to expand, shrink, rotate the image; can actually go through an entire mall walk in a store pick an item look at it, move on to another store and so forth all from comfort of their lazy boy. To be honest I don't expect this to rock my world just yet, I mean not in the fullest sphere of my expectations, where I can go to a store and not find a human being but tiny projectors creating holographic humanoids ready to answer all queries and "process" my requests; but then again I don't want to miss cajoling for discounts just yet!
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