Mobile Cloud Computing and Cloud Phones!

I recently started leading a new multi-national research project about Mobile Cloud Computing, it’s development, impact and potential opportunities for communication providers (telecoms). It seems to me that Mobile Cloud Computing is going to become increasingly important in the the near future in terms of providing browser based access to more and more cloud-based applications and services. Instead of downloading and installing applications on the mobile handsets (smartphones, tablets, etc.) users will access them directly in the cloud and display through the mobile browser, i.e. analogous to Software-as-a-Service provisioning. Some predictions include:

In Gartner’s 2010 key IT predictions for organizations, mobiles phones are expected to overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide by 2013.

ABI Research predicts that there will be nearly one billion end users accessing the “mobile cloud” by 2014. Smartphone applications will move from the handset itself to the cloud – creating a ecosystem for new kind of smartphones – sometime termed “Mobile Cloud Phones”.

There are many reasons for this to materialize. For example, developers are increasingly discontent by being forced to develop and maintain applications that are exclusive for certain mobile phone platforms, e.g. iPhone, Android. This is both costly and limits developers to adhering to the rules of the platform owner – and, sometimes a limited market segment. Many users are also frustrated to have no choice but purchasing a powerful, and more often expensive, smartphone to have the possibility of running mobile apps.

It is clear that with the emergence of the iPhone and the App store, there is already a huge supply of applications avilable. However, most of these applications require users to download them to the handset, install them and run on the handset. Concequenlty, smartphones are becoming increasingly advanced and powerful, embodying sophisticated computing architecture and operating systems. The best analogy could perhaps be the Wintel cooperation – whereas a new version of Windows OS required the user to upgrade to a more powerful Intel processor.

Instead of handset-centric installation, new Cloud Phones will be able to utilize 4G, LTE networks to their fullest and perhaps adapt specifically to certain cloud provider applications or infrastructure. This will be a very interesting segment to investigate and there are many questions that arise. For example, will some of the current smartphone platforms, e.g. the Symbian, MeeGo, Apple’s iOS or Android be dominant in new “Mobile Cloud Phones” – or will there be a completely new platform that has still to be developed!