Ericsson and the Omniphone

Looking into the future of Smartphones in 1999

Many years ago, as a mobile wireless computing evangelist, aka road warrior, Ericsson invited me to the launch of a new mobile phone the R320 that featured WiFI and had a Bluetooth dongle. I might still have one, buried with other mobile treasures from the past.

Queue in The Clock by Graeme Revell from Tomb Raider:

I remember it well, as much for the excitement of some of the guys looking forward to watching a private screening of Angeline Jolie as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider.

As we sat down with our beers and ice cream, they showed a video of a guy and his son in a sunflower field. It was imagining that it was 2007 and they were talking about what it was like in the old days, i.e. 1999. The boy finds a Roman coin, which his dad scans with the camera on his phone and gets information about it.

The boy asks all sorts of questions, like why people needed cash, and why would they stand in line in a supermarket to buy groceries. Why did cars get stuck in traffic jams? Well obviously not everything it predicted came true, but even the form factor of where they said mobility was going, was pretty spot on.

Can you think of any good songs about the future? The one that still appeals to me is Zager &Evans. In the Year 2525. Hopefully, it wasn’t prophetic.

I remember buying the 45 and really enjoyed the B Side as a kid. Do you remember it?

Now we are wondering what the next mobile form factor is going to be. Most of the major players like Apple, Meta, and Alphabet are playing with glasses. Some like Google tried and failed with this several years ago, as much because of the price tag as anything. I remember people lining up for selfies wearing Google Glasses at a mobile computing conference, but I don’t know anyone who bought one. Perhaps it’s a lot about timing. If you take the Apple model, you need a huge number of people prepared to take a huge risk investment in developing apps, that potentially nobody will want, or might want, but the platform fails.

Glasses have merit for gamers, for sport, maybe for driving, either for VR, or more likely AR, but they haven’t really come up with a model, that has the ability to excite millions of people, now paying subscriptions for multiple apps on their smartphones and smartwatches. Have you ever checked your account for app subscriptions that you don’t use? I just had one auto-renew, Pacer. It was a cool app and motivated me to walk a bit more than normal, with adventures that allow you to take a virtual hike as in-app purchases.

I’m wondering if the next mobile user interface will have its own screen at all. Maybe we will have a device that can cast to the screen of your choice but is more like a little black box. We already cast from our phones to our TVs, and many people now have multiple displays, in their cars, on their walls, and in some cases even on the fridge.

I feel that the existing players have too much at risk, to innovate too far away from the devices that currently generate massive ongoing royalties as well as very profitable hardware and services. This means that manufacturers have to provide sufficient critical mass to justify the purchase of the device with the embedded apps.

It’s also interesting to note that while mobile brands like Ericsson, Blackberry and Motorolla predicted the technology that is ubiquitous today, it isn’t their names on the devices in our pockets.

New players like Humane are going to try to do the same to Apple, Samsung and others who currently hold us in the palms of their hands. Humane’s device, the AI Pin, is looking like a contender or at least a trendsetter, with a price tag of only $699 and launched this last week.

Check out this video. This is available for order today and delivery in early 2024. The designers were involved in the design of Apple and similar products previously, so to a degree, it is an evolution.

I don’t think it is the exact form factor or UX yet, just as the Palm and Pocket PCs were just the beginning of the smartphone era. But I am pretty sure that the current form factor of my iPhone is heading towards the end of its life span. It might take another 5 years before technology like this gets past the Gartner Hype Cycle early adopter phases, and it might not be Humane that does it, but I suspect that the way we communicate 10 years from now, will be very different to what we use today.

It feels like the industry lacks imagination, or is just clinging to their user base for the current devices. Foldup phones are predicted to have reached 5% of sales by the end of this year. The benefit to the manufacturer is they can continue to use the same environment and protect their subscription revenues. The cynic in me says that their lifespan will be subject to the number of times you open and close the device, so you might pay more but have to replace the device more often.

What do you see yourself using in 10 years time?