Future Technologies

Open standards – the future of mobile

By James on 23 April 2008

CALIFORNIA, USA – Nokia’s tech chief Bob Iannucci talked at SOFCON 2008 about how the future of mobiles rest firmly in the past of computers. No, we’re not going backwards, but Bob reckons if we look backwards, we’ll see what’s going to happen next with mobile devices.

In short, the future of mobiles is a single platform for all mobile devices which enables applications to run on any device, and devices from different manufacturers to be inter-operable.

The Register does a good job of highlighting Bob’s choice cuts including:

“I feel like I’m been watching a movie I’ve seen three times before….
Today, in the world of mobility, there’s a huge diversity of hardware,
the devices are largely incompatible, the notion of someone writing a
piece of software that runs across all devices does not exist yet,” he
said. “The rest of the story hasn’t been written yet. We’re really only
at the beginning, waiting for a standard platform.”

Iannucci sees the future not as a single hardware solution, but a
“combination of software on devices – enablers and programming tools -
and something in the cloud.”

The Register highlights Bob’s thoughts on sensors on devices (GPS,
accelerometers and other technologies) and the example he gave during
his talk

“As an example, he pointed to Nokia’s fledgling TrafficWorks project,
an application that reads GPS data from countless phones as they drive
down the road and then uses that data to predict traffic congestion.
These predictions can then be pushed back down to phones to help people
avoid congestion.”

Open standards certainly seem the right way forward. What do you think?

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Tags | mobile, Nokia, Open standards

Post a comment

PhoneBoy Says:
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:23 pm

Open standards–and open source–are a driving force on the desktop space. Why would we expect mobile phones to be any different in this regard?

Antoine of MMM/Brighthand Says:
April 25th, 2008 at 7:05 pm

Open standards are a good thing, as long as they are easily adaptable by both developer and manufacturer, and easily understandable in their applications by the previous groups and the attending consumers.

For example, what Yahoo just announced that it is doing across all of its properties in terms of uniting the data using semantic web elements. This is good, as it makes a lower barrier to entry for competing services, but also gives consumers options towards how they want to use that information. While hardware is a bit less versatile, having open standards can promote the same kind of workings.

Open source is a slightly different matter. Personally, I think it should be commnuity driven, but big company funded in some endeavors. For example, what Nokia is doing with Maemo is a good thing for the industry, and a solid model to follow for some applications of mobile. As open source developers and communities become a bit less new at this, I would expect to see better relationships and products that come as a result of a shared vision (in some areas) and freedom to innovate (in all areas).

Tommi Vilkamo Says:
April 28th, 2008 at 9:41 pm

While I love open standards, interoperability and single-platform-across vendors as much as the next guy, this is the story that everybody has been telling for the last 10 years or so.

I would love to have a public conversation about which part of these visions has materialized already, which is currently happening, and which part is likely never to happen. And why. Where we were right, and where we were wrong. What have we learned, and which mistakes are likely to repeat themselves – if we are not careful.

Would you happen to have a good story to initiate this conversation?