Smart Futures

AlwaysOn have a number of great webcasts from the AO Innovation Summit 2005 in Stanford. I was particularly interested in the discussions on smart phones.

Outtakes:
- I loved the description by one of the speakers about changing the names of smartphones to 'social computers'. Whilst this was true - its a computer that is used for socialising, the phrase tapped into the lingua franca for the latest technology hot topic 'social applications' from social networks to tagging impressed the spin doctor in me.

- Seagate spoke about the rise of having a hard drive in cellphones, which I thought I was quite interesting, I can see that the continuing reduction in price of Flash and keeping a decent battery life is going to squeeze the opportunity for hard drive manufacturers

Converging Functions
- Opportunity exists for both converged and dedicated products. Both will co-exist because of peoples different needs
- Simplicity and integration were considered to be two key drivers for successful converged devices

Storage
- Terabytes on the phone will be driven by the ubiquity of smartphones
- Smartphones is currently outsold by 'feature phones' by 10-to-1

The Killer App
- Trip Hawkins - social networking (IM, Blackberry, voice), benefit improving their social life