A CloudPhone is an interesting concept

Posted in: Blog, Mobile by openhanced on February 23, 2010

Just back from MWC and I’m recovering from all the news announced. Lots of phones, apps., talks, pacts etc.

However, between all the news I missed an overall visionary overview of the mobile industry and where we are heading. Maybe I missed it because I did not attend the real congress but I heard no buzz around phone functionality in the cloud or CloudPhones.

What is a CloudPhone
To me this is a device that gets 90% of its functionality and content out of the cloud. It includes the interface that is not baked into the device or on SIM but a real fully connected phone with a very lightweight OS. For mobile operators that would mean a smarter bit pipe in the end (they hate the word dumb bit pipe).

For a CloudPhone to happen we need one important thing at least: high-speed wireless access.

Desktop trends vs mobile trends
If we look at the trends in the mobile world and compare that to web 2.0 and the Enterprise we notice a difference, the mobile world is focusing on native (desktop for mobile devices) while web 2.0 and Enterprise is all about cloud. I think this is an remarkable difference especially if you know that the iPhone was web apps. only in the beginning. The biggest question is “why is this the case?”. For sure the answer now is reliable high-speed access everywhere. Whatever phone manufacturers say the concept of phones have not changed much, how we use them however has changed a whole lot. So the question is if we should change the phone model if we get mobile access everywhere? I think we should.

I think it is very weird that we carry around all this privacy data the whole day with a big risk of losing it. Can you imagine you would make a backup of your business data everyday and carry it around the whole day in your pocket? Basically a phone stores a lot of information locally and I see that as a huge risk. If you ask people why they carry their phone the whole day you get two answers:

1. I need to be in touch with everyone;
2. I’m afraid to lose it so that others have all my data when I lose it.

Point 2 is really important, the risk of losing or getting robbed is a real risk everywhere in the world and the old phone model where everything is stored locally is absolutely not the smartest way to do it (again, everything else moves to the cloud).

In the cloud is saver
The cloud is good enough to store all our: Tweets, banking information, credit card information, employee info, invoice etc. so why isn’t it good enough to store all our phone stuff (I don’t mean syncing). Actually, the mobile operator is already storing a lot of our phone information and in some countries they are actually forced to do so.

I notice in talks with other phone users that their contact list is holy although mostly very incomplete. My private contact list on my phone does not contain much information either, just first names or nicknames. I personally would like to have an online contact list without the need to sync., just make calls from a real-time online list.

Having all in the cloud is also much saver and controllable if you lose your phone, you could easily log in through a portal and disable your phone.

The dumb bit pipe discussion and how it can become smarter
Again and again you hear that mobile operators don’t want to be called dumb bit pipes but my point is that they should be very happy. They control who drives on the mobile wireless highway and nobody else. Mobile operators are the ISP’s of the mobile world, they just need to be much more innovative from an end user perspective. From an infrastructure point of view they are already very smart and innovative. They need to think how to move stuff to their cloud infrastructure (contact lists, phone settings) and forget about this dumb bit pipe discussion. They need to look into different ways to setup call connections (see Ribbit) and offer solutions like Dial2Do, Twilio etc.

If they manage to move to a smart bit pipe they can charge even more for Internet access because that is the future for sure.

The CloudPhone, it is almost there
Basically the iPhone and Android are already partly cloud phones because they connect to an incredible amount of online services, everyday more services are released. But, wait a minute, the phone itself is not a cloud device yet, indeed it isn’t. It is still this device with local storage and native apps. However, within 2-3 years it can be. New faster mobile wireless access (Long Term Evolution) can make the CloudPhone happen very soon!

What needs to happen
A lot needs to happen, the mobile industry has evolved but is now on a collision course with standards. Everyone is doing his own OS and the AppStore goldrush is just copycat behavior because nobody can come up with something more innovative. There are two things that need to happen:

1. Availability of high-speed mobile internet all over the planet;
2. New lightweight OS’es that all support the same standards and focus on mobile web apps.

I think Palm is actually the company who has the best and most open implementation although I must confess I have never used it. However, specification wise I can say they have adopted emerging standards.

How does a CloudPhone look like in 2-3 years
A CloudPhone is an always connected device that uses a high-speed always on data connection to present the user with the latest information. It does not use synchronization because it gets all data from the cloud (address book, settings etc.). Only a small core OS will be installed on a SIM card (probably possible) and a browser will take care of the rest. Smart technologies like HTML5, Ajax and REST will make the phone super interactive and responsive. The CloudPhone will be secure because when it gets stolen everything can be disabled online fast and easy (IMEI number).

The dumb bit pipe will be upgraded to a smart bit pipe and most call handling will be done by cloud servers at the mobile operator. Mobile operators will also take care of the storage of address books and phone settings (again, in the web 2.0 world we already do this) so that we can easily move our profile to a new phone.

It could look like the very interactive interface that Microsoft showed with Windows Phone 7, I actually think MS could pull this off with all their very advanced backend services easily. Some of this they will do in Windows Phone 7 but it will probably be another fat mobile client.

I personally would love to have a full CloudPhone that is always connected. Currently my phone is used for so much more than just making calls, it is really starting to replace my desktop in some areas