Mobile phones with Ultra high speed Internet connection promises a lot, are we there yet?
Imagine flipping open your mobile phone and being able to check the balance on your bank account, finding the latest scores of your favorite sports team, if you're on a diet find out what your daily calorie intake is, find out that your tofu lasagna is only a 600 calorie lunch, download the hippest ringtone, find out which space station is about to fly over your home city, and finally find a great restaurant that you and a friend can dine at.
The chief executive of eBay, Meg Whitman says, "Window into the possibilities of what might happen when high-speed broadband services are widely adopted in other places too". More and more cellular customers will want to be listening to streaming music on their cellular phone. An innovative company called Amp'D mobile wireless has leased bundles of services from Verizon wireless. In no time soon, the 18-year-old to 35 year old market will be able to bundle what media they would want on their cellular phones before it's shipped to their home. They will be able to select version of their favorite sitcom, a new ring tone, games they would like play on their Amp'd mobile phone.
A country where three quarters of the population owns cellular phones is Korea. Back in the 60s, there was one television for every 300 people in that country. Look how far technology has influenced Koreans. In fact, if you are a Korean couple looking for an apartment, a sign will display on the bottom of the for rent sign showing the Internet connection speed for that particular apartment block. This is very important for many young Korean couples and can be a deciding factor whether or not they rent that particular apartment.
New cellular technology is so close, but when you get there expect to pay
The Ministry of information and communication or MIC in Korea says that people will be able a surf the Internet while they're traveling in their vehicle at 60 kph. This service is called WiBro. MIC has leased the following three Korean telecom companies: SK telecom,KT and Hanaro to be able to offer high-speed wireless Internet access. You're probably asking what does this have to do with North Americans? There will come a time where your cellular phone will be able to read the radiofrequency identification tags, the bar code that you see on every single item in a grocery store. Imagine having a MIC cellular phone that will be able to read the expiry date of: milk, cheese, yogurt, fresh meats, baked goods, and seafood at your local grocery store. Imagine your MIC cellular phone being able to pick up a signal from an advertisement which would ask you to download a preview of a brand new movie. You never thought that your cellular phone could do so many things did you? The predicted success of this wireless Internet service is overwhelming. WiBro is estimating that there will be over 9 million new subscribers between now and 2011.
The promise of watching DVD videos on your Windows Smart phone
Already many Japanese commuters are watching video on their mobiles while commuting long distances from their homes to their work on the subway. Well if you own a Windows Smart phone, you can convert a new DVD movie on your computer to watch it on your Windows mobile device. No matter how old you are, folks of every generation enjoy movies of all kinds. I don't know about you, but I am a Film Festival junkie. When the Vancouver film festival come in to town, I purchase the Visa Gold Express ticket allowing me to sneak into a movie 5 minutes before the curtains roll. There are 5-10 seats reserved in every theater for Visa Gold express pass holders. The most popular and well received film Festival movies are later turned to DVDs and that is what I look forward to watching. A very popular software called Pocket DVD studio 3.5 allows you to convert any DVD movie you watch at home to the following formats:wmv,avi,mpg,mpeg,pm,rmvb,tivo2go. What's nice is that you won't have to spend an entire afternoon converting only one movie. Diane Dumas, an editor at Pocket PC took five hours to convert a DVD movie to Windows media video format. However, using the pocket DVD studio 3.5, she was able to convert her DVD movie in less than one hour.
What happens after you convert it ?
1. Save the DVD you converted either on a storage card or your desktop hard drive
2. Synchronize the converted DVD to your Windows mobile device using ActiveSync
3. Now sit back at your favorite WiFi hotspot, lazyboy chair or park and watch your DVD movie on your smart phone
Another exciting development that's happening in Spain right now is a service called Sim pay. What is Sim pay?
This service already exist in Spain and has the ability to use your cellular phone to make mobile payments easier. The goal of Sim pay which is also a nonprofit organization is to have the entire network of European cellular users, all 70 million of them be able to select on their cellular phone, "buying with Sim pay". An equivalent Sim Pay service can be adapted to United States. Pay pal now has more than 60 million account holders in the world. Perhaps pay pal will look at this model and take note.
What is the real-life application of Sim pay? If you travel frequently to Seoul, the capital of Korea, you may stumble upon a experimental caf?where you can order an Asian version of cappuccino and be able to pay for it with your cell phone. In fact you may not even have to interact with a human being, you simply order your to cappuccinos on your cellular phone screen and t hen pay electronically and receive your receipt of electronically as well. But how does the cappuccino taste prepared by a Korean robot?
Source: The Economist Issue April 2-6th 2005, Special Report, Mobile phone is a man's best friend, Pocket PC November 2005
Copyright ?Rene Tse has covered the cell phone industry for more than six years, writing on a wide range topics such as: Tmobile cell phones, which carrier has the most reliable: TV capable, mp3 free cell phone handsets and the exciting release of UMTS Universal Mobile Telephone service from Cingular Wireless.
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