New Mobile Technologies For 2010

Here at HTC, we're more than just a cell phone provider in Horry County. We are also committed to sharing the latest and greatest technology trends for our customers. We're constantly scouring the Web to find out what's happening in technology and deliver it as added value to you. With this said, analyst firm Gartner released a report that highlights the up-and-coming mobile technologies that they predict will significantly impact the mobile industry over the course of the next 18 months. Some of the top technologies identified include the following: Bluetooth 3.0 Since we provide wireless calling plans, this is one is a hot item. Bluetooth 3.0 includes faster speeds, transferring files at 480 megabits per second in close proximity and 100 megabits per second at 33 feet. The technology is retro-compatible, allowing old devices to communicate with new ones.

This new technology allows you to roam a little further from your phone while using a Bluetooth headset and also includes the option of being able to print documents from your phone.

Mobile User Interfaces + Mobile Web/Widgets Mobile user interfaces and mobile web/widgets were listed separately, accounting for two items on the list, but in reality, they can be combined. Both of these items indicate how mobile computing is rapidly becoming a new platform for everything from consumer mobile apps to business-to-employee and business-to-consumer. Today's smartphones, like the iPhone, phones with the Android operating system and Blackberry, deliver significantly better interfaces for browsing the Web, therefore making it accessible to more people. Widget-like applications (think iPhone apps) are also sure to become more common in everyday life. However, the mobile Web still has challenges ahead, including a uniform set of standards for browser access to handset services like cameras or GPS.

Location Awareness Location sensing, powered by GPS, as well as Wi-Fi and triangulation, opens up new possibilities for social networking and presence applications via the mobile Web. Technology's earliest adopters are already familiar with social networks like Brightkite and Loopt which let you reveal your location to a network of friends. Newer technology is always advancing though. A great example is the iPhone IM client Palringo, which have added location services to their application, which allows users to see how far away their contacts are, therefore introducing a whole new dimension to mobile communication. We think that over the next few years, technology like this will become more commonplace, but it will also raise questions about privacy.

Near Field Communication (NFC) NFC is a technology that gives you, the consumer, the power to use your mobile phone for paying bills and other sundries. However, Gartner predicts that the move towards mobile payment systems won't occur this year in mature markets like the U.S. and Western Europe. Instead, NFC is more likely to take off in emerging markets such as India. Other uses of NFC technology includes the ability to transfer photos from phone to digital photo frames, will also remain elusive to more developed markets.

Display Technologies It's also predicted that display technologies will see improvements in the upcoming years. New technologies like active pixel displays, passive displays and pico projectors will have an impact. Pico projectors are tiny portable projectors that enable new mobile use cases. Instant presentations in informal settings could become more common when there isn't large, cumbersome equipment to set up. The different types of display technologies introduced in 2010 and beyond will surely become massively important differentiators between devices and will also impact user selection criterion, according to the Gartner study.

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Best, Tom