Tag: mobile

MWC18: Video and the future of mobile

Mobile World Congress has descended on Barcelona for what is expected to be another record-breaking year.  Although the show only officially opened on Monday morning, several major exhibitors get their retaliation in early by hosting massive press announcements on Sunday.

Samsung used Sunday to announce the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+, the latest iteration of its flagship smartphone.  With a strapline of “The Camera. Reimagined” the smartphone’s capabilities as a communications device appear to be of secondary importance.

Monday saw the launch of the Xperia XZ2 by Sony. Again, the launch announcement focused on the camera with the claim that it’s the first smartphone to shoot in 4K video in HDR. Both the Galaxy S9 and Xperia XZ2 also offer video capture at 960 frames per second to give users the ability record clips for play back in super slow-motion.

One of Monday’s conference sessions, “Value Creation & Investment in Content”, explored the challenges and opportunities for telcos to become content players. Mark Britt, CEO and Co-founder of iFlix, the OTT content provider carving out a very successful business in Asia, and Jean Coffey, Senior Director Business Development at Jukin Media which helps user generated content creators to maximise their audiences and revenue potential, both talked about how UGC content is becoming increasingly professionalised.  The advanced camera capabilities of the new devices from Samsung, Sony and many other smartphone suppliers tie into this trend and will appeal to vlogging social media influencers.

In the opening keynote session, Kazuhiro Yoshizawa, CEO of NTT DOCOMO talked about how the Japanese operator is already working with diverse partners to ensure that new 5G services are available in time for the launch of its 5G network.  His prediction is that uplink video will account for a much more significant proportion of traffic on 5G networks than has been the case on 4G and 3G networks.

So video appears to be central to the future of mobile.

The Ryder Cup: a time to look back at looking forward to the future of mobile

Back in 2001, I was asked to write an article offering a vision of what mobile might look like a few years hence.

As the article was due to be published shortly before the 2001 Ryder Cup at the Belfry, I tried to look forward four years to the next occasion when Europe would host the tournament.

At the time of writing in the Summer of 2001, Europe’s 3G auctions were drawing to a close but 3G wouldn’t be available commercially for another three years or so. Steve Jobs probably hadn’t even started thinking about the iPhone or apps yet: the original iPod would only be launched in October of that year. Europe’s first camera phone, the Nokia 7650, wouldn’t appear until the following year when Tom Tom would also launch its first sat-nav hardware.

With the US taking on Europe again in the Ryder Cup from tomorrow, I thought I’d try to track the article down. Originally published by Vodafone, it is no longer available on any of their websites as far as I can tell.

However it is possible to look back at what I tried to anticipate in 2001 thanks to the Internet Archive. On re-reading, I was surprised and gratified to see features I speculated about – voice control, navigation, e-ticketing and mobile money, smart watches, casting – hadn’t turned out to be so ridiculous.

PS: 9/11 happened between the original publication and the scheduled end-of-September date for the 2001 Ryder Cup: that year’s tournament was postponed for a year, and the bi-annual event has been held in even years ever since. A second cancellation due to the Covid-19 pandemic means that the 2020 Ryder Cup was postponed until 2021, to return the tournament to odd years.

PPS: As someone with a personal interest in 19th century sporting history, I’ve searched the Internet Archive quite a few times. I’m still trying to work how I feel about some of my own writing now residing there!

PPPS: Sam Ryder, who donated the eponymous trophy, made his fortune with a mail order business founded in St Albans. In the way he planned and organised his business, he was the Jeff Bezos of his day.  You can find out more about Sam in this video.