In your next mobile phone

Network capacity is of the essence, and the ability for a handset to make use of accrued network capacity is as crucial as the availability of the network. 3G is here, 3.5G is on everyone's lips, 4G is around the corner, and the industry just agreed on LTE (Long Term Evolution).

No doubt future handsets will have more music, more games, more photo, more video capacities, and a better image, a better quality. Widely spread video telephony will come too. Thanks to progress in battery technologies, future handsets will have a better autonomy (anyone remember the first handsets with less than 18 hours autonomy?). Web browsing will improve, and provide more user friendliness. More phones will embark a GPS capability. And some companies now propose to use this GPS capability as a lost child locator. Already the iPhone, and other smart phones come packed with functionalities…. that few people are actually using.

The technology of the handset is bound to evolve too. No doubt the arrival of an open system like Google-supported Android will change the value chain of the handset industry.

Closer to our concerns, some handset vendors are coming up with more security aboard the handset. For instance, OKI announces a handset with face and iris recognition. Besides securing the handset itself, this could open a convergence avenue between mobile communication and identity segments.

Near Field Communication will become more and more present on handsets. For the time being, most NFC pilots use the same Nokia 6131 handset. We will shortly have a wider handset selection at the time mobile payments are evolving from pilot phase to a full rollout.

Thierry Spanjaard
Chief Editor
Smart Insights