ESPOO, Finland – Smart ecosystems sits at the centre of our mobile life five years from now. That’s what Nokia’s head of corporate strategy Heikki Norta outlined this morning when he talked about what life will be like in 2015.
During a short video, we saw how a combination of devices and services worked together to de-clutter life. This comes from a background that’s seeing the relationship between consumers and brands evolve from a monologue right now through a conversation and into a continuous relationship. The idea is simply to help users manage their lives better and enable them to create, share and get the most out of life.
In brief
- Future devices will enjoy vast power
- Connected TVs to be the norm
- Contextual awareness will be key
Heikki believes the processing power we’ll see in devices in the coming years will be way ahead of what we have now. This will enable devices to process a lot more data and, together with a substantial increase in bandwidth, help them work seamlessly with the cloud. This will enable users to live a “more spontaneous life”, helping to snatch opportunities easily where the device and the service are doing all the heavy lifting, sorting through the masses of information and anticipating the user’s needs.
Although clearly just concepts at this point, the devices shown in the animated video (we’ll try and get a copy for Conversations) paint a picture of how we’ll be using devices and services. Connecting to TV, so we can share TV watching experiences with people on the other side of the world, or even using the mobile device as a projector. Contextual awareness plays a big part too, with the device working together with the cloud, both pulling information down to the device, and also sending information back.
Take the fisherman in India. Not only is he using his device to get the best prices for his fish, but he’s making extra money by selling his data to overseas universities who can tap into his and other fishermen’s information for their research.
It might not be a single device either. We saw an example of the user who’s main device is his mobile computer, acts as a satnav and a multimedia centre – much as our devices do today. However Mr 2015 also has a smaller, sub device which he can use for sport. With the same interface as his main device, and the addition of the cloud, means he can move seamlessly between the two.
Of course, this is all still conceptual, but we can see easily how the services and strategy being laid down today form the backbone of the lives we’ll be living tomorrow. No, Ovi services aren’t perfect right now. But we’re at the very beginning. The pace of evolution, both of devices and services will see us all living in a very different world. And you know, it isn’t that far away!