May 02, 2006
Cell Phones: Not Your Father's Mobile Device
Silly me. I use my cell phone mainly for, well, talking to people. Sure, I send the occasional e-mail, use it as an alarm clock when traveling, send a photo to mom now and then, and keep track of the time (who needs a wrist watch anymore?). But what that boils down to is that, like most Americans, I'm a piker, cell phone wise, at least compared to mobile phone users in, say, Asia.
In Japan, for instance, people use their cell phones to buy items from vending machines, purchase train tickets, pay for food, open doors, trade on the stock market, wager at on- and off-track betting, and change selections on their DVD or TV sets. Moreover, they're now watching TV on their cell phones at no charge, not to mention digitally recording TV programs. Advertisements routinely have bar codes that can be scanned in via mobile phones, then allow purchases to be made on the spot. All in all, approximately 20 million Japanese have mobile phones that support advanced features such as these.
So why don't U.S. cell phone users have this kind of functionality? Why is, asks Takeshi Natsuno, VP for multimedia services at NTT DoCoMo (as reported in a Knight-Ridder article), the U.S. "the world's most behind country" in mobile functionality? One reason is apparently that Japanese carriers are willing to take a risk without a clear revenue model in place, something U.S. carriers shy away from.
If case you've missed it, we've been diving into mobile-phone technology for a while now, in articles such as:
Coming up shortly in the June 2006 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal (and available here) are article such as:
- "OpenGL ES and Mobile Devices" in which we show how OpenGL ES provides cross-platform real-time 3D graphics for mobile devices.
- "Heightmap Terrain Rendering" where we use heightmaps and Java's Mobile 3D Graphics API to create realistic 3D graphics for mobiles devices.
Then in the July 2006 issue, we present "Radios, Cell Phones, and Java" which uses Java's Advanced Multimedia API to turn your cell phone into an AM/FM radio.
Stay tuned.
Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:25 AM Permalink
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