Official Google Blog: The future of mobile

9/19/2008 03:18:00 PM

The Internet has had an enormous impact on people's lives around the world in the ten years since Google's founding. It has changed politics, entertainment, culture, business, health care, the environment and just about every other topic you can think of. Which got us to thinking, what's going to happen in the next ten years? How will this phenomenal technology evolve, how will we adapt, and (more importantly) how will it adapt to us? We asked ten of our top experts this very question, and during September (our 10th anniversary month) we are presenting their responses. As computer scientist Alan Kay has famously observed, the best way to predict the future is to invent it, so we will be doing our best to make good on our experts' words every day. - Karen Wickre and Alan Eagle, series editors

There are currently about 3.2 billion mobile subscribers in the world, and that number is expected to grow by at least a billion in the next few years. Today, mobile phones are more prevalent than cars (about 800 million registered vehicles in the world) and credit cards (only 1.4 billion of those). While it took 100 years for landline phones to spread to more than 80% of the countries in the world, their wireless descendants did it in 16. And fewer teens are wearing watches now because they use their phones to tell time instead (somewhere Chester Gould is wondering how he got it backwards). So it's safe to say that the mobile phone may be the most prolific consumer product ever invented.

However, have you ever considered just exactly how powerful these ubiquitous devices are? The phone that you have in your pocket, pack, or handbag is probably ten times more powerful than the PC you had on your desk only 8 or 9 years ago (assuming you even had a PC; most mobile users never have). It has a range of sensors that would do a martian lander proud: a clock, power sensor (how low is that battery?), thermometer (because batteries charge poorly at low temperatures), and light meter (to determine screen backlighting) on the more basic phones; a location sensor, accelerometer (detects vector and velocity of motion), and maybe even a compass on more advanced ones. And most importantly, it is by its very nature always connected.

Project out these trends another ten years. You will be carrying with you, 24x7 (a recent study of Chinese mobile customers showed that the majority of them sleep within a meter of their phones), a very powerful, always connected, sensor-rich device. And the cool thing is, so will everyone else. So what are you going to do with it that you aren't doing now? Here are some possibilities:

Smart alerts: Your phone will be smart about your situation and alert you when something needs your attention. This is already happening today -- eBay can text you when you've been outbid, and alert services (such as Google News) can deliver news, sports, or stock updates to you. In the future these applications will get smarter, patiently monitoring your personalized preferences (which will be stored in the network cloud) and delivering only the information you desire. One very useful scenario: your phone knows that you are heading downtown for dinner, and alerts you of transit conditions or the best places to park.

Augmented reality: Your phone uses its arsenal of sensors to understand your situation and provide you information that might be useful. For example, do you really want to know how much is that doggy in the window? Your phone, with its GPS and compass, knows what you are looking at, so it can tell you before you even ask. Plus, what breed it is and the best way to train him.

Crowd sourcing goes mainstream: Your phone is your omnipresent microphone to the world, a way to publish pictures, emails, texts, Twitters, and blog entries. When everyone else is doing the same, you have a world where people from every corner of the planet are covering their experiences in real-time. That massive amount of content gets archived, sorted, and re-deployed to other people in new and interesting ways. Ask the web for the most interesting sites in your vicinity, and your phone shows you reviews and pictures that people have uploaded of nearby attractions. Like what you see? It will send you directions on how to get there.

Sensors everywhere: Your phone knows a lot about the world around you. If you take that intelligence and combine it in the cloud with that of every other phone, we have an incredible snapshot of what is going on in the world right now. Weather updates can be based on not hundreds of sensors, but hundreds of millions. Traffic reports can be based not on helicopters and road sensors, but on the density, speed, and direction of the phones (and people) stuck in the traffic jams.

Tool for development: Your phone may be more than just a convenience, it may be your livelihood. Already, this is true for people in many parts of the world: in southern India, fishermen use text messaging to find the best markets for their daily catch, in South Africa, sugar farmers can receive text messages advising them on how much to irrigate their crops, and throughout sub-Saharan Africa entrepreneurs with mobile phones become phone operators, bringing communications to their villages. These innovations will only increase in the future, as mobile phones become the linchpin for greater economic development.

The future-proof device: Your phone will open up, as the Internet already has, so it will be easy for developers to create or improve applications and content. The ones that you care about get automatically installed on your phone. Let's say you have a piece of software on your phone to improve power management (and therefore battery life). Let's say a developer makes an improvement to the software. The update gets automatically installed on your phone, without you lifting a finger. Your phone actually gets better over time.

Safer software through trust and verification: Your phone will provide tools and information to empower you to decide what to download, what to see, and what to share. Trust is the most important currency in the always connected world, and your phone will help you stay in control of your information. You may choose to share nothing at all (the default mode), or just share certain things with certain people -- your circle of trusted friends and family. You'll make these decisions based on information you get from the service and software providers, and the collective ratings of the community as well. Your phone is like your trusted valet: it knows a lot about you, and won't disclose an iota of it without your OK.

Now, if we can just train it to do your laundry ...

Posted by Andy Rubin, Engineering Director

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Shayne Wang:这是我在google官方blog中摘抄的有关于移动通信的未来的文章,自从1973年世界上第一台移动电话在纽约街头拨出信号的那一刻,就意味着地球人们的生活方式要有一个天翻地覆的变化

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如今手机已经走过了35年的历史,在经历过砖头一样的"大哥大",现在正在大行其道的二代通信技术"GSM",如今手机这个高科技的产物已经来到了第三代.它在从开始普及的时候只有打电话和发短信功能,甚至不是彩屏的也不是和弦的,到现在可以拍照片,播放音乐,上网甚至可以替代电脑做一些事情,这确实是在大大的改变我们的生活.甚至可以不用说话只需要用手指在键盘上按来按去代替日常的交流,手机着实已经变成了现代人身上不可替代的一部分(废话一大堆,感觉像在写论文...)

我似乎从手机进入到我的世界就开始与手机有着不同寻常的缘分,第一次接触手机就在几个小时内把手机的诸多功能摸透了,当然如果不是SIM卡被锁上,我可能还会了解的更多;我所拥有的手机也无一不是被我拆坏的;大学卖过手机,毕业后第一份工作也是设计手机...

当然,google也成为了我生活中不能缺少的一部分,除了使用搜索引擎我会优先使用百度,不过这也丝毫不影响我对他们的忠诚度,在使用了一系列的相关产品后,我还将考虑等Android手机在国内发行的时候买一部,啊哈,这才是我要说明的,明天也就是2008年9月23日,Android手机将首先在德国召开T-mobile的发布仪式,也就是说明天算作是Android手机的诞生日.与Iphone一样都是手机的划时代产品的Android虽然比Iphone完生了一年,但是强大的功能,低廉的价格,完善的软件系统,强有力的后背支援,以及注重中国移动3.5亿消费群体,这些足以成为打败Iphone的理由.

手机的明天,让我们拭目以待吧!