Friday 10 December 2010

The rise of personal pocket power...

I have long said that we will in future see a world where personal computing devices that we can carry in our pockets change the way we go about doing many of the rudimentary activities (working, playing, shopping etc.) we currently undertake. This is slowly being borne out by the amazing range of apps that smartphone and now tablet users have access to anytime and any place. ComputerWorld has now predicted the historic shift that in the next 18 months, shipments of app-powered smartphone and tablet devices will reach and pass the number of PC shipments. Given the ubiquity of the PC over the last few decades, this is indeed an important shift.

I believe this is just the start. Tablet formats are finally changing the idea of what a computing device has to look like and how it has to be used. The mouse is disappearing. File systems are being conveniently hidden from users. Adding new software apps is becoming a new easy affordable activity rather than the laborious, expensive and technical process it has often been on the PC.

The trend in gaming, started by Wii and now being copied by Playstation's Move and XBox's Kinect, of gesture-controlled computers is also developing fast. As with the iPad, we will see the computer slowly disappear from the user's consciousness as they simply get on with doing stuff! And the development of wearable and environmental computing will take this further in the future.

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