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As the year 2006 winds to a close,What will happen in the mobile phone industry in 2007,Here are ten predictions.

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Prediction Number 1: CD-Quality Music Will Be The Killer Phone Application.

Within four years compact disk (CD)-quality music is going to be on more than half the entry-level phones used around the world. Music will be the killer application on cell phones measured by consumer use and revenue-generated by handset makers and wireless service providers. For substantiation of this prediction consider the iPOD's enormous success. People will pay for good-sounding music, including hundreds of their favorite songs, easily accessed by simply pressing a button. And these music phones will store hundreds and later thousands of songs, which is plenty for the average music fan.

Prediction Number 2: Mobile TV Use on Phones Will Grow, but Not as Fast as CD-Quality Music.

Mobile TV will continue to be developed in the next few years, but will be challenged to win market acceptance because of the small size of cell phone screens. These diminutive screens make long-term, non-stop viewing unappealing, not a wonderful user experience.

Conversely, music will be a non-stop, slam dunk appealing feature of a cell phone that won't require staring into a small screen. It will only require the cell phone user to listen and relax.

The most likely mobile TV applications will be people checking sports scores and updates; cartoons, videos, standup comedy and general news. All these will need to fit in about a 3-to-20-minute time frame, according to industry experts. Most people won't watch TV on a cell phone for much longer than that, except for some special, out-of-the-mainstream reasons.

Prediction Number 3: The Earliest and Most Frequent Users of Mobile TV Will be People RidingTrains To and From Work

Mobile TV's early adopters are expected to be mass transit commuters, primarily Asian and European adults wanting to get the early morning news or sports highlights for 10-to-15 minutes from TV stations. This already has started in Asia and will take off in Europe in particular because a much higher percentage of them take trains to and from work each day than Americans.

Put another way, in America, every cowboy has his own horse, meaning his own car. This is not literally true but the concept is accurate. Because such a large percentage of them drive to and from work, they won't be able to watch TV as much as people riding trains.

This kind of mobile TV viewing will replace to a substantial extent the time such commuters historically have spent reading newspapers.

One problem that will continue to vex mobile TV, however, is that it can swallow the bandwidth available in the network, which is why only a few wireless service providers plan to provide mobile TV as an individual data stream. Instead, they are working on collaborations with companies that have broadcast TV networks, but these relationships are in their early stages of business development.

Wireless service providers want to increase the average revenue they can generate per subscriber. Just giving a subscriber that has mobile TV capability does not immediately and easily translate to boosting those revenues per user. So why should they promote mobile TV if it won't help them generate more revenue? This is a key, largely unresolved question.

Prediction Number 4: Digital Cameras on Cell Phones Will Have Less Customer Adoption Compared with Music.

A phone camera generally produces average-to-poor quality photos compared with stand-alone cameras, which is no wonder when looking at the price. Average phone cameras cost virtually nothing whereas stand-alone cameras have a price tag similar to a feature phone.

So who wants to use a bad camera to take relatively low-quality photos? It doesn't make much sense. If you are interested in taking good photos, you might as well pay for a good camera.

Furthermore, only a small percentage of cell phone users, similar to the overall population at large, are avid users of cameras. This percentage is much lower than the number of people who like to listen to music.

Still, to be clear, cameras will not disappear from cell phones, but usage of average phone cameras will be low compared to music players.

Prediction Number 5: The Entry-Level Cell Phone Market Will Be the Sweet Spot for CD-Quality Music Applications.

There is a large market, called the entry-level phone market, just above the emerging markets ultra-low cost phone segment. Users that can't or don't want to spend money on feature-rich, high-end phones still have the desire for functionality that goes beyond just voice and short messaging service.

That's why the entry-level market, offering compact-disk quality music, will be the sweet spot of the market for the next several years. These entry-level phones will be higher-performing and more feature-rich than the ultra-low-cost segment, which are extremely basic phones. These entry-level phones will also be much more affordable than the "Swiss Army Knife" type of phones with lots of unused features.

Prediction Number 6: India Will be the Fastest Growing mobile Phone Market for the Next Several Years.

India, which has emerged as a great new frontier for mobile phone business, will in the near future focus heavily on the ultra-low-cost phone segment but soon develop a strong market for entry-level phones. A huge number of Indian citizens won't be able to afford the higher-end models priced in the $200-$400 range.

But they can afford lower-cost ones. According to the Gartner Group, India's mobile penetration rate hovers at 7 percent now. It is projected to grow to 32 percent by 2010. According to Gartner Group, India is the world's fastest growing cell phone market at 31 percent annually.

Prediction Number 7: Simultaneous Phone Applications Will Be Crucial; Those Who Don't Offer Them Will Lose Out to Those Who Do.

Think about this: You don't want to stop listening to music while you receive and answer a text message. You don't want the music player to stop playing while a call comes in; you prefer that it just pauses, waits in the background and is ready to continue playing after the call.

Or let's say you're speaking to someone on the cell phone about going to a movie together that night. You want to download a video clip to view it so you can decide with the person on the phone whether the one you have the video clip for is the one you want to see.

You don't want to have to turn off your cell phone-essentially ending the call-to see the video clip. You want to be talking to the person on the other end, then look at the phone's display screen so you can view the video clip. Then you can put the phone to your ear and talk about the video clip.

These are examples of simultaneous cell phone applications, which are growing in number, complexity, and benefits.phones that can do the most simultaneous applications at the most affordable costs will win over consumers.

Prediction Number 8: More Feature-Rich Phones Will Be Key in Enabling Wireless Service Providers to Boost Their Average Revenues Per User.

Wireless service providers will continue to grapple with a problem that has been vexing them for years. The problem is that even though the growth rate for mobile phone sales and phone subscribers continues to increase, the average revenue the service providers and handset manufacture gain from each subscriber continues to fall.

To increase that revenue, a growing number of service providers will continue to pitch and offer cell phones and subscribers on more feature-rich, revenue-generating services such as high quality audio streaming, download portals for music and video, and mobile TV.

The basis for people to have a good experience using these services is the performance of the network connection and the quality of the multimedia in the mobile phone.

Prediction Number 9: 3G Cell Phones Will Not Be All About Merely Enabling the Connected Lifestyle, but Rather Perfecting the Connected Lifestyle.

The mobile phone will be central for perfecting the connected lifestyle. This means that in the future reliable, consistent, always-on connectivity will become essential anywhere, anytime.

It will become less acceptable during the next few years to just make a phone connection. The connection will need to be perfected, meaning not flawed and unreliable, but rather as good as it can be.

Lousy service, interrupted calls, the inability to connect and stay connected will become less tolerated than ever. An industry-changing mindset will take over, in which it won't be about being wirelessly connected. It will be about being wirelessly connected quickly, easily, inexpensively and reliability-in other words, perfectly.

Prediction Number 10: More Collaborations Will Be Necessary to Survive and Thrive in the Mobile Phone Market.

Wireless service providers are teaming with the holders of music and video rights to offer downloads, and they will be building relationships with broadcasters to deliver mobile TV without burdening the mobile network. On the handset side, a rapidly growing number of collaborations will be formed between hardware and software companies to build more complete, more reliable, and more feature-rich cell phone platforms.

Fewer companies will be able to do everything required to build a platform on their own. Cellular baseband experts, for example, will collaborate with providers of global positioning system solutions, for installation in these basebands, to provide value-added functionality. These collaborations will help accelerate time to market while minimizing research and development expenses.

_________________
U.S BLEW UP THE TOWERS

[ This Message was edited by: axxxr on 2006-11-27 03:30 ]
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Posted: 2006-11-27 04:28:29
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I agree with Prediction No9. 3G connections are fast but when downloading it takes a few seconds to get up to proper 3G speeds and the coverage is still flaky.

Hopefully HSDPA might improve this immensely.

_________________
I my W900i

[ This Message was edited by: goldenface on 2006-11-27 14:10 ]
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Posted: 2006-11-27 14:50:07
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Perhaps 3G at lower frequencies like 900Mhz will help the coverage..
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Posted: 2006-11-27 15:02:21
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The first prediction is the most accurate in my opinion.
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Posted: 2006-11-27 15:44:17
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Prediction 1 & 5 are both very accurate. Music is going to go to mobiles eventually, which is possibly why Apple is having a go at it. Who'll need an iPod in the future? I don't, even now, hae an iPod.
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Posted: 2006-11-28 04:25:53
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Agree with most of 'em..
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Posted: 2006-11-29 05:11:00
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Agree with No.1, can see it specially with phones.

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Posted: 2006-11-29 09:45:05
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