By Glenn Hefley
Mobile phones have come far since the big tissue box sized battery pack that
sat in the truck under the huge boomerang antenna. Mine fits in the same pocket
as my keys and wallet, and its not even one of the better ones. So how much
can we get into the palm of our hands?
The answer apparently continues to grow and change every year. While the cell-phone
camera is well known and the cell-phone with MP3 playing capability is coming
to acceptance on the market, around the corner are cell-phone TV's and possibly
the iPod Cell phone.
In early January, Apple Computer Inc, filed four
trademark applications for the term "Mobile Me." The applications
covered areas such as computer services, providing music over a local or global
communication network, portable digital electronic devices and software, and
telecommunication services. Since news of this has gotten out on the web, bloggers
and news services alike have been asking the question "are they making
a cellphone?". A few experts handing out opinions have said they doubt
this is where the computer company is going. The development curve from ground
up design to add cell phone technology to their skill set would be too expensive,
and unnecessary. What would probably happen are deals with companies such as
Motorola, who already have the technology to develop.
Some experts suggest that Apple would not get involved with mobile phones because
that is not where the iPod marketing is centered on. Personally I believe these
experts are forgetting that last year Apple announced a deal with ABC under
which iPod users could download episodes of hit series such as Lost and Desperate
Housewives the day after they screened on television. With growing interests
in the mixing of Cell Phone and TV Broadcasts it would not surprise me if this
is the direction iPod is heading for.
Speculations continue and alter as time goes on. What ever they are up to, "Mobile
Me" sounds interesting.
Apple is not the only company out there with possible plans for the future
of the cell phone. Since last September, Oxford Mobile TV has been conducting
a trail to see what the viewing interest would be for mobile phone TV broadcasts.
Thus far, those that took part in the trial watched an average of three hours
a week. With the service being expected to cost between £8 and £10
a month, 76 percent of those in the trail said they would take it up.
There are several cell phone models on the market now capable of viewing TV
broadcasts, what the industry has really been waiting for is an available amount
of broadcasting spectrum to be freed up for usage, and the answer to this problem
may be at hand.
IPWireless announced a new solution, which allows mobile operators to leverage
existing unpaired 3G spectrum to meet the mobile TV and mobile multimedia demands.
So we may not be waiting as long as many companies thought.
When the pocket mobile phone also holds massive amounts of data, provides TV
and multimedia broadcasts, as well as MP3 and personal movie files, images,
and voice recordings, what exactly are we trying to achieve with these devices?
Where are we going with them, now that we are mobile? While it would be great
to have a single unit which housed the information and media I needed throughout
the day, as well as the ability to send and receive other files, and take the
place of my current mobile phone, I still get visions of my Palm Pilot, which
now gathers dust for the most part, and has been replaced by the pen and 3x5
index cards it fought so hard to replace. The techy in me however can't wait
to see what the mobile phone will evolve into next.
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