So there is a lot of talk about how the future of the Smartphone technology and market is going to pan out. There are many thoughts on the subject and I’ll let you browse the net to find the popular ones. I’ll be honest I haven’t read them all mostly because I like to formulate my own opinions.
There is no doubt that the future of Smartphones lies in applications. But of course I don’t mean all the bikini apps that are on AppStore, oh wait. Seriously though, the applications make the phone. And even though people attribute this to Apple in the current Smartphone era, Apple only learned from their mistake with Microsoft. If you’re old enough, I’m sure you’ll remember Microsoft’s Where Do You Want To Go Today? marketing campaign. Well, Apple’s “There’s An App For That” campaign is basically the same thing.
However, just bombarding the user with Apps is not the future of Smartphones, or at least I hope not for the sake of our children. The real future will come with smarter phones and even smarter Apps.
Seriously, Where do you want to go today
In an ideal future, when you setup your newly purchased Smartphone, it’ll ask you a bunch of questions, browse your local emails (locally only) and track your usage behaviour. Based on the information it collects, you are presented with simple options and/or presentations for your day to day activities. So if you like reading news, all your news feeds will show up on a ticker-like interface on the home page. Same thing for messages from people you regularly communicate with. If you’re a weather buff, your background will indicate the current state of the weather (just like Poynt does now). If you only commute to and from work, then when you start driving, your phone will guess at where you’re going and give you directions based on traffic info. If you’re a business man, when you get a call but you’re in a scheduled meeting, your phone will not play that annoying star trek ring tone but rather a small beep. My point is that we need to bring HTC’s tag line to life. As they say, “You don’t need to get a phone. You need a phone that gets you”.
For the examples I’ve described (and more), there are already Apps that do those things. However, as a user you have to seek them out, buy them, download them, install them and configure them. After that, you still have to seek them out to utilize them. The future of Smartphones is to remove these onerous tasks and have it done for you. The device would figure out what you need and present it to you in a way that is seamless and easy to use.
Smarter than the average Smartphone
Another key aspect of the future of Smartphones is the addition of more smarts. Now, there are people out there already thinking about this. Siri is a great example of this additional smarts. It’s a virtual personal assistance that does the following:
“Just like a real assistant, Siri understands what you say, accomplishes tasks for you and adapts to your preferences over time.”
And that is exactly the point. Future Smartphones need to be Siri on steroids. Your phone has to be smarter. If you email or message a friend to meet at 6pm but you have an appointment in your address book at that time, your phone should warn you. Heck, it should warn you f you are on a phone call and you promise to show up at 7pm at home but you have a meeting that ends at 6:30pm and you need 45 minutes to get to your destination. Or imagine around 11:45am, your phone asks you if you need to buy lunch today and then based on your usual preferences, recommends a place nearby, provides you with the menu, etc.
Your Smartphone knows more information about you and your location than you actually do. So it needs to assist you in your daily activities.. seamlessly!
Change from within
Although most experts believe that 3rd party applications are the key to future of Smartphones, I believe that it’s a lot more than that. The device manufacturers have a huge role to play. First, they need to provide their developer community with the tools and capabilities to implement all the examples I mentioned above. This not only includes great development environments and access to the inner workings of the device, but also needs to include no restrictions from creating such Apps (such as Apple’s AppStore policy). Second, they need to add more logic and smarts into their respective platforms to allow for the automated and dynamic loading and configuration of the correct set of applications based on user preferences and behaviour as outlined earlier.
So there you have it… my view of the future of Smartphones. Now go develop it 
As usual, all comments as welcome.
