The key mobile trends emerging from CES 2011

Compared to the Forbes report published here a couple of days back, this report looks only at mobility related trends. 4G networks are coming, smartphone could become smart enough to be the only device to be carried by consumers. If need be you could dock it with a larger screen, keyboard etc.Products are coming out that are smartphone and yet powerful enough to do double duty as a computing device and then dock with thos things if needed. Motorola Atrix, RIM Playbook etc. are some examples.

On the other side Android Honeycomb that can handle multi core ( in fact, it would require multi core processors) are going to barge into this integrated space too if they have enough communication savvy to connect to 3G and 4G networks! I am happy that, when one or the other happens, there will be only onedevice to carry rather than we trying to juggle several of them!

The key mobile trends emerging from CES 2011

Integrated Netbooks-Some More Thoughts

If we ever arrive at a definition of an integrated device that does netbook functionality, can cover the smartphone features and be an eReader too, it'll make life so much easier for students in general! With Kindle like facilities they would never need to carry a school bag to carry books again. Whatever other books they need can get downloaded via wireless from the school library! All their communication needs, access to the internet as well as reading and researching books can be fulfilled by this one device! You just carry this handy unit in your shirt pocket( may be the jacket pocket) and you have everything you need!

If the claims like those from Nvidia that powerful graphics chips they are bringing out will beat the likes of Atom from Intel and make for truly powerful netbooks, they may continue to play games or view videos and other entertainment activities after school hours are over too.

Product Boundaries Blurring

In those earlier time products used to be very distinct. A TV was a TV, a PC was a coputer you used for computing and Internet use. A laptop was a laptop you lugged around when you hit the road and a cellphone was a phone you carried with you wherever you go!

Then things started getting complex. Cell phones started eveolving and email, net surfing became fairly common. A FM radio receiver, a digital camera, a music player are all sort of expected in a phone. What adds a new dimension is the capability to uncompress and play HD video on phone( see, TI OMAP 3430 Processor Handles Video For Smartphones). That takes a lot of processor power. It is also a short step to tag on some general computing tasks, run some applications. That's happening. In fact iPhone hyas a store dedicated to applications running on it.

Laptop meanwhile eveolved into netbooks. Smaller displays, less capabale processors, less power consumption and of course less costly applicaes came on the scene. This is the netbook category and being driven by the likes of Intel Atom processor. Can we not have a device then that is like a netbook and gives me the phone capability! Will it be any different than the smartphones! People have started promoting a category called smartbooks that fill this niche. So what is this device going to be like, going to eveolve into finally!

My own thoughts are it will be really nice to have a netbook, a little smaller, thinner format that is like a comuter, net surfer, a mobile phone of course. Otherwise it does not make sense to carry a phone, a netbook and such other multiplicity of devices. Ideally I should be able to carry one device and be able to take care of everything that we need to do on the road!