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Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Krishna Kumar
The mobile phone has evolved into an inseparable device for many. In spite of the many shortcomings in the device as well as the service, it has become the primary mode of communication for most of us. But as a computing device, it still has a long way to go. The blackberries and the smart phones of the world have at best brought a limited form of email to the mobile phone. Full and interactive application usage is still a distant dream. And for that, the limitations are many, including the way traditional applications are architected and of course the limitations of the client devices and the connecting technologies.
Just imagine how great and ubiquitous a computing platform the mobile phone could become. Looking at the sheer number of phones out there and the growth rate of the segment, mobile phone based computing is a revolution waiting to happen.
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Krishna Kumar
Group Editor
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I am repeatedly using the term “mobile phone” to avoid confusion with mobile computing, which more often than not refers to notebook based computing.
Like with traditional computing, it could take off first in the Enterprise and then spread to the personal segment, or given the sheer number of phones out there, the personal segment might take the lead. We have so far waited for mobile phone based computing to take off, waiting for connection technologies and the device itself to mature, before applications and dashboards made their appearance on the mobile. With fairly powerful mobiles having now reached a threshold level of usage, it's time to attack the problem from the other end. Perhaps we need to look at the way our applications are architected and the way they connect and deliver data to the client end. Perhaps we need to completely re-architect some applications for a mobile phone environment. Perhaps, when creating new applications, we need to do it with the mobile phone as the target device.
Emerging standards in SOA could perhaps do the trick or we need to develop new standards with mobile phone based, on the move computing in mind. Perhaps we would need to go even further and look at the way our applications are to be architected. After all, they were made for relatively fatter clients and stronger connects.
Even if that is done, the quality of our networks would still be a major bottleneck. Remember the days of dial up connections when you used to click on a link and wait for all eternity for something to happen? Hopefully, as mobile applications mature, the networks will also mature in service quality levels. Like the PC did a quarter of a century back, we are waiting for a killer application to come, for computing on the mobile phone to take off. That killer application could be a productivity application in the enterprise space, or equally if not more likely, it could be an entertainment application in the personal space.
Source: PCQuest
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