TELCOMS WANTING TO GET OUT IN FRONT OF THE PACK MIGHT WANT TO HEED THESE TRENDS:
1. 1. In the Special Materials category… Recent improvements in metallic glass make it stronger than steel, and as malleable as plastic. That’s right, the indestructible cell phone! Now you can go parasailing with your cell phone without fear of it dropping, so long as you have GPS activated. Let’s keep in mind, while there is no shortage of futurist ideas about how to shape tomorrow, some ideas positively set the mind afire.
Can you just see the ad roll outs? “Mommie, daddy just drove over the phone!” “Not to worry, darling, it’s a (fill in the name of your telcom here) phone! I’ll browse for my ‘you can’t touch this app’ and send it to your phone via Bluetooth, so it can jack up the car, and you can retrieve your phone.’”
Or how about the tv commercial with the guy flinging his phone at the wall in anger, only to hear – from his phone – “I’m sorry, sir. I’m indestructible. I can, however, help you channel your rage far more productively. Would you like to access any number of my apps on how to get over yourself?”
Or the guy taking a hammer to his cell phone after his girlfriend dumps him over the phone. Getting nowhere, and hearing a shout from his boss, he looks up at the construction site. Realizing he’s falling behind in his work, he politely casts the original hammer aside, and screws the handle into his cell phone. And returns to putting your house together in record time using the phone as a hammer!
I tell you, this one you can milk until the sun don’t shine.
For more on the use of metallic glass in cell phones, see: http://www.mobilemag.com/2011/05/18/metallic-glass-could-now-be-as-cheap-to-produce-as-plastic/ Also see: http://www.mobilemag.com/2011/03/02/novel-metals-could-be-the-21st-centurys-plastic/
2. 2. Tablets with dual displays. Like this one from NEC: http://www.mobilemag.com/2011/05/21/nec-android-tablet-gets-dual-display/
It doesn’t take much imagination to see yourself having kinky phone sex with your girlfriend on the left panel, as you read Plato’s The New Republic on the right panel. Should give “mind fuck” new meaning. And could you see trying to do both having to constantly press buttons to switch home screens back and forth in the absence of this well considered adaptation to the android tablet offerings? Yuk. Could get messy. Speaking of… we might need a page scroller for that right screen with speed settings triggered by how often your eye moves to the panel on the right. (I’m assuming you’re keeping the moving erotica of your girlfriend on the left panel, because you’re right handed.) Ok, the more appropriate ad I suppose would show the reader enjoying all those fantasy book illustrations of dragons and gargoyles on the left panel that ordinary book publishers could scarcely afford before, while reading the accompanying text on the right panel. Giving e-books a bit of a next generation face lift. I suppose if you prefer reading Harlequin romances, my original idea still works.
3 3. Flexible, rollable phones? Ok, I admit I didn’t see the need until someone planted the idea in my head. Now I can’t get it out, and I’m having strange deviant thoughts of wiping my ass with my flexible cell phone the next time I’m out of toilet paper. Presumably my model will be dishwasher friendly as well. (Not to fear, my dishwasher hasn’t seen something so backwards-thinking as a dish or silverware in ages.) http://www.mobilemag.com/2011/05/18/toshiba-getting-closer-to-flexible-rollable-phones/
Blowing my nose with my cell phone? Wiping back the tears after seeing the next phone bill? There is just no end of uses for a flexible cell phone. Dupont has been working on the idea of a “flexible” newspaper or magazine for at least a decade. I suppose another use would be washing your car on a Saturday, while reading the latest headlines beamed to your “wash cloth.”
What about tee-shirts that just beam your thoughts at passersby so you know what your first blush impressions are of one another? No more, “I think he really likes me.” That would of course require marrying the flexible screen idea to the cap you’re wearing that translates your brain waves – yet another take on a cell phone that doesn’t require pressing buttons or toting around in your hand.
Laugh all you want, Steve Jobs surpassed Google and the largest telecoms on a market capitalization basis by finding those ideas that set the mind afire and ignoring the others.
So are you fired up yet, or not?
