Hutchison manager: Mobile devices to converge
During his presentation to the Ericsson Mobility World Developer Day in Sydney, Williamson observed that mobile devices such as phones are converging in a drastic way with increasingly popular digital camera technology. He pointed to the October 2004 release of Samsung's SCH-S250 5-Megapixel camera phone as one example of a product that spans the gap between the two product ranges.
In addition, Williamson made the point that bluetooth and USB-enabled home photo printers are making inroads into the shop-front digital camera printing market, with the humble PC being increasingly cut out of the device chain.
Blogs also came under the microscope as Williamson spoke of the idea that "markets are conversations" and that blogs are beginning to offer a crucial way for consumers and companies to communicate -- sometimes even against companies' will or ability to control.
Williamson went on to speak about the future role of so-called 'pod-casting' - where digital audio streams can be downloaded from a PC to a device such as an iPod and played back later at the user's convenience. This technique obviously recalls to mind the use of a radio, but with two important differences: users can download audio from anywhere in the world via the Internet, and play it back at whatever time and location they want.
Later on in the presentation Williamson spoke about the current trend in the United States towards the adoption of 3G mobile technology - a trend that is continuing in Australia. Hutchison's '3' network is soon to face a high level of competition with Optus, Telstra and Vodaphone all planning to launch 3G services this year.
The Hutchison manager's last prediction again related to convergence as he spotlighted the increasing role of operating systems such as Linux, Symbian and Windows in providing open and consistent standards for the mobile phone development platform.
Williamson is the applications partner manager, 3G Business Markets for Hutchison 3G Australia and has 18 years of experience in various IT industries, including 8 years at Microsoft. At Hutchison he runs the Developers on 3 program that he founded in 2003.