Over the last 18 months (or so) mobile handsets turned mobile application handsets has been a trend that doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. Those of us born before 1990 will turn into those old people who tell their grand children “When I was your age mobile phones were only for talkin’!”
Apple’s now ubiquitous iPhone has led the charge with a number of other also-ran’s like LG, HTC and (gasp!) Nokia. Nexus One from Google is the latest among these devices who have proven that people will do almost anything with their mobiles if the user interface is good enough to do so.
With the way these devices have transformed our daily lives hardware, software, media and advertising giants of this world are keen to expand and exploit the shift. The obvious evolution is to have a device with more screen real estate and a bit more horsepower to enable more features and applications. This is what is happening in 2010.
The rumors of the Apple tablet have been around for over a year, long before the name “iSlate” was bandied about. And yesterday Microsoft showed off their new tablet computer, developed in conjunction with HP, at the CES show in Las Vegas. Funny enough, Steve Ballmer referred to the device as a “slate”. If you’re interested in the particulars here’s a short video of the new device:
With the world’s largest two consumer software companies both going after this market there will be a “Slate” owned by you or someone you know in 2010.
Impact for Telecommunications Providers
“Media Consumption is the driving force behind these devices
Without a doubt tablets/slates/whatever you want to call them will be nothing without connectivity to the Internet. ”Media Consumption” is the driving force behind these devices, either paid-for or advertising subsidized. When these devices are commonplace gaming, movies, music books and media we can’t imagine yet will be driving per-user bandwidth to levels that will keep network operators awake at night.
Unfortunately the current public network infrastructure is insufficient to handle the amount of traffic we have today. The downturn of Q4-2008 until (hopefully) Q4-2009 has forced most Service Providers to hold off on any Core or Metro networking upgrades. I’ve been talking about the 2009 spending patterns in other posts, here and here. Hopefully we’ll see an improvement in 2010.
