Personal mobile hub concept revived with new focus on web services
About four years ago, there was considerable buzz around the idea of the personal mobile hub, which basically turned the mobile phone into a basic wireless gateway that would connect via Bluetooth to a range of other media, storage or input devices, creating a super-personal area network. Although Samsung got on board, working with the concept's main champion IXI, and Intel and Motorola also showed interest, the idea failed to live up to its potential in the mainstream. Now, however, it may have a second lease of life, thanks to operators' urgent quest for new device formats to support new ways of using their mobile broadband networks; and the need to push mobile web services to the next level by integrating them more naturally with the handset.
Although companies like Nokia continue to refine the 'super-smartphone' - a device that can combine a host of functions, from music and video to communications to mass storage, in one mobile unit - there is a parallel trend for users to purchase multiple devices, each optimized for one function, and effectively integrate them into a personal system using web services and web 2.0 applications such as Flikr for photos or Google Maps. The logical extension of this is to make the integration between web-based software applications and devices far more seamless, so that the hardware/interface and web experiences really mirror one another, even across multiple device formats. Clearly much of the advanced development being done by the mobile internet majors on user interfaces is geared to this, with the work on widgets, dynamic interfaces and web 2.0 coming out of Apple, Nokia, Google, Samsung and others.
But one of the companies gaining most attention for a more complete realization of the mobile integration concept is start-up Bug Labs, whose plans recall the personal mobile hub, but are far more software-driven, and designed to work within an open source ethos. It has yet to release full details of its products, but these appear to revolve around an open set of interfaces that will support modular mobile computing and encourage simple development of applications. The company describes its BUG system as "an open, modular, consumer electronics web services + hardware platform. Bug seeks to bring to the world of hardware gadgets what the internet, open source, XML and web services have brought to the world of software and media."
Making the relationship between web services and devices more seamless lies at the heart of this effort and, if BUG can gain developer support and deliver genuine progress, it will be of keen interest to all the parties aiming to ensure that next generation networks do not just deliver conventional services more quickly, but support entirely new ways of working that will have significant appeal to users, and therefore revenue generating capabilities.
Of course, such an approach will also accelerate the demise of the walled garden, implying an unlimited ability to mix and match services and devices - as supported in a limited way by the proposed rules for the US 700MHz auction. This would not only restrict the cellcos' ability to keep users within their portals - already rapidly declining - but would prevent them tying devices to their networks exclusively. So, keeping the iTunes download service unique to the iPod or iPhone gadgets would no longer be an option - or not one acceptable to consumers - forcing device makers as well as service providers to rethink their business models.
Of course, the main barrier to the open mobile internet is currently lack of user confidence in mixing and matching their own personal systems, rather than purchasing turnkey ones in which the operator serves up the device and portal. Any developments that make the process of user customization easier will hasten the fall of the walled garden, and these are now coming thick and fast from the mobile internet community, which is starting to embrace formerly unlikely members such as Nokia. For instance, the ability to drag and drop web services onto a dashboard that is pervasive from laptop to all other devices (mobile or not) is key, and developments such as Nokia's widsets or Yahoo's Go Mobile (plus from integrated dashboard start-ups like Mentations) go some way to deliver that.
The Apple iPhone, for all its advanced interfaces, is, in so many ways, the last fling of the old closed mobile model (with iTunes not even being a web service). The sort of work coming out of Bug Labs and a host of other innovators should ensure that such an approach to mobile broadband declines even more quickly in the years ahead.