The Hindu Business Line : ‘Mobile space headed towards convergence’

Bangalore, May 14 The mobile market is headed towards convergence – of platforms, operating systems, applications, technologies and media, said Ms Christy Wyatt, Vice-President – Software Platform and Ecosystem, Motorola. But even as technologies convergence, one device is not displacing the other.

For instance, even as the camera on the mobile phone gets sophisticated, we are not seeing it displacing traditional digital devices and cameras, explained Ms Wyatt, during her keynote address at the Motodev Summit in the city today. “There are incremental opportunities to create seamless experiences without displacing anything,” she said.

As the mobile phone market gets “bigger and bigger” (by 2012, world-wide and 12 billion handsets will be sold, with revenues of $1.6 trillion) with greater innovation, and as smart phone usage grows rapidly, marketers will have to expend their energies on “focussed users,” said Ms Wyatt. For example, they have to address questions such as: Is the user just looking for basic functions or does he want to multi-task, or does he require multi-media features or music?

More options

“There will be continued explosion of investment and innovation in the mobile space with more models and more competitors. The platform will also open up to more options and opportunities,” predicted Ms Wyatt.

Admitting that the skew in India is towards low-end phones, said Mr Malcolm Dawe, Vice-President and General Manager, Mobile Devices – India, Motorola, said even low-end handsets have some multi-media features built into them. “Even in the rural areas, there is a great need for entertainment. For instance, the music space is growing and even low-end phones have music features on them,” he said.

The Indian market will see more touch screen products from Motorola in the days to come. Handsets with Wi-Fi capabilities will also be launched.

The summit also saw Motorola highlighting some of its innovations such as mood-based music application, personalised radio, social mapping tools, video messaging services, image recognition and language translation.

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