“The Future of Mobile Computing: Integrated Features and Services Five Years From Now”

With Henry Tirri, Executive Vice President and CTO, Nokia; James Barrese, CTO, PayPal; and Gavin Michael, Chief Technology Innovation Officer, Accenture; hosted by Chetan Sharma, President, Chetan Sharma Consulting

HT: Mobile devices use different kinds of connectivity. Unlicensed bandwidth connectivity are higher ids associated with services like Facebook, Twitter. Connectivity doesn’t allow you to swap back and forth between the services.

Tying ID to device vs. tying it to SIM card.

JB: Huge opportunity to decrease friction when consumers try to pay merchants. See huge opportunity to build a digital ID that allows consumers to pay without even taking out their wallet, through digital recognition.

GM: Eventually we will be able to take ID data and use it to create a highly-individualized treatment of the customer. The problem now is that we don’t have the capacity yet. It’s starting, but it’s very small steps. No infrastructure yet.

“Who owns the data” will be a seminal challenge. At the moment there’s no working model, although people are realizing that they have to give up privacy in order to participate in this.

CS: Will different form factors emerge in 5 years?

HT: In the future your computer will consist of multiple devices, will accelerate the evolution. Energy consumption will become a factor. Using small devices that use very little energy to do smaller tasks and a higher variance of devices.

Next generation of computers have individual components that can be used separately, but when you put them together, they work as a whole.

JB: Explosion of innovation offline has met Amazon’s retail choice. Those walking around with devices in their pockets have apps that companies are using to track them.

DM: Consumers are more about tech they’re carrying. Empowered consumers are coming to work for the tech companies and demanding the same capabilities from their enterprise. Using sensor information differently to manage resources, maintenance in a different way. Mobile is affecting deep verticals as well as horizontals.

CS: Where is home automation headed in 5 years?

HT: From a tech perspective, a lot of this can be easily done now, in a cost-effective way: sensors that measure environment, etc.

There has to be some other incentives also. Understanding what people are willing to learn is the key to the status of home mobile. Technologically, it’s not a problem. But it produces a new value chain. Who will take care of and pay for maintenance of sensors? What if they take out your neighbors tv (radio-based)? It will take much longer than 5 years at a wide spectrum, but some user cases may come much earlier.

CS: Ecosystems and platforms:

JB: We’re seeing the full digitization of money and we need key operators to streamline the experience.

CS: Will platforms matter as much in 5 years?

GM: I think there will be two or three that dominate. Platforms will be doing everything they can to bring developers onto their devices. Our view of platforms will broaden. Some will be key in mobile. Others will focus on home automation, etc.

HT: Catastrophe happens when surges are unexpected or vice versa. Energy will be the fundamental unifying issue and limiting factor.

CS: GIven $10 million to invest, what would you spend it on?

JB: The field of payments is exploding. The whole world is being connected to the Internet and how will they trade with each other?