The next small thing
I’m pleased to introduce this guest post by Kalle Snellman, Senior Market Analyst at Idean. Idean is a Pathway sponsor at the next MEX on 4th/5th May, where they will responding to the MEX Pathways as both speakers and team leaders in the working groups.
Have you noticed how the disruptions have changed our favourite devices, habits and services?
In the table below Idean has listed some of the issues that have either disappeared or become insignificant in our daily lives by the year 2000 and 2010. We have stretched even further and forecast what the next couple of decades will do for many of our habits and practices. A teenager in 2025 will not comprehend a concept of a newspaper as we know it. Hmm…or actually, have they already out learned that by now?!
Idean table showing technologies becoming insignificant – click for full size PDF version
Do we really need to handwrite: ‘eggs, butter, bread, milk, etc.’ on our daily paper shopping list over and over again in the latter part of the decade? Given the predicted smartphone penetration and development by that time I would assume not.
Do you remember the fierce battle between the next disc storage format. Blu-ray emerged as the winner in 2008. However, if the battle would not have ceased by now, Netflix would have nailed the last nail into the coffin of that discussion. Who believes that we will still be using any discs after 2015 when most of the content seems to be moving into cloud?
Another question is what will come and replace all these issues? There won’t be one answer or solution on each of the listed items. Instead, there will be multiple answers and solutions to each of the item listed. At least some of the replacing new things will turn into gold for commercial players.
What do you think will be insignificant by 2030? Would love to hear some additional thoughts on this from MEX readers…
For my own prediction: by 2030, I can imagine physical touchscreens becoming obsolete. The technology already exists for virtual projections and delivering haptic feedback without the need to actually touch a surface. As we’ve seen with physical buttons, there are long-term cost, durability and process benefits whenever a manufacturer is able to eliminate mechanical components.
Physical touchscreens is a good one Marek. Simultaneously owning hardware could become less important.
Hello Kalle – the winner of the 2009 MEX Innovator of the Year was a very interesting concept design for abstracting identity from hardware:
http://www.mobileuserexperience.com/mexdesign/?p=134
I like this idea that any piece of hardware you touch has the potential to become your own for a short period of time.
Of course, there’s still some work to be done on cloud architectures and identity management to enable this. Ramona Liberoff at Movirtu will be talking more about this topic of identity and multiple touchpoints in Pathway #2 at MEX on 4th/5th May.