Mobile technology is the future
Today technology changes rapidly but the fastest changing is in the mobile technology area. Almost every month, there are new mobile technologies, new applications, new phones, and new tablets emerge. These constant changes create more opportunities to people who are interested in mobile technology. Today most mobile applications are just adaptations of ideas that originated in the Personal Computer (PC). Many people just transfer PC applications to mobile applications but soon when new ideas, new applications unique to mobile emerge and integrate with other technologies, everything will explode. Wall Street analysts often compare mobile technology with the Internet in the early 1990s where most people have no idea what the internet could bring. They ask: “Who is the Google of mobile technology? The answer is simple: We are only at the beginning of mobile technology with many exciting things to come in the next few years, it is difficult to draw conclusion at this time.
Basically mobile technology, including smartphones and tablets with seemingly limitless functionality, is bringing radical changes in our lives. For most people the obvious thing about smartphone are sending and checking emails; surf the internet; watch a football games on their phone; or playing mobile game. However as students in technology, you should look beyond that into the near future where many things are ready to explode.
Let us look what few things that a smartphone can do based on what students are working in my program at CMU. What if a mobile phone could detect cancer cells circulating in your blood by using the phone camera to take picture of your blood sample and send it to a medical doctor for analysis? This application is currently being reviewed by a government agency for medical use and soon will be available. What if your mobile phone can warn you of a possible heart attack? This application is already available. What if your mobile phone could monitor your diabetes by measure your blood glucose, and warn you if it is high then send a text message to your doctor requesting a checkup? This application already exist and available for purchase at App store. What if your mobile phone can monitor your health sign such as blood pressure, heart beat and other activities as you work, rest, run and walk, analyze them and suggest some improvements for your health? There are several apps being sold in App store already. What if you mobile phone can measure your brain waves and detect any anomaly that may signal Alzheimer disease? This application is currently under testing for approval for sale. What if your mobile phone can test your DNA and predict certain possible diseases? This application is currently being prototyped in small scale (100 people) and will go into the next phase of testing with 1000 people. These samples are a very small sample of thousands or more applications are being developed all over the world but I think the real potential of mobile technology is still to be discovered.
The reason mobile apps are growing rapidly because they are easy to build but everything we have today is only a small part of the huge mobile potential. The market for mobile apps to meet specific needs (m-health, m-commerce, and m-government) is still wide open and waiting to be discovered. Developers who want to build apps need to determine how to focus their effort before start their development project.
Most developers like Apple iOS because the popular of the iPhone and iPad. Their apps can be sold on Apple App Store, which is the most popular store all over the world. However, Apple will keep 30 percent of the sales price and pay developer 70 percent. Google’s Android OS is also very popular as it has more phones (Most mobile phone use Android.) The problem with Android is it is an “open platform” that can work on any device, but developer must create several versions of their applications, each for a specific phone, screen sizes, keyboard techniques, and other variables. Like Apple, Google also keep 30 percent of sale price and pay developer 70 percent. There are other platforms such as Microsoft and Nokia but they are not popular and have limited number of users but because there are few applications, an app developed for Windows would have better chance of getting noticed and capturing a large share than iOS or Android.
If you are Computer Science or Software Engineering students, you may want to take few classes in mobile development because the future is in mobile as personal computer is the thing of the past. You must look beyond what people already doing today toward what you can achieve with new ideas, new innovations etc. Who know some of you may be the next Steve Jobs?
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
