No Touch; No go

The technology treadmill moves at such a rapid pace that even well-established companies get caught on the wrong foot, and then struggle to strike a balance between their current businesses and paradigm-shifting disruptive technologies that force them to introduce new devices or services at short notice.

Consider this. On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google Inc. has developed the first touchscreen laptops powered by its Chrome operating system that are likely to be sold later this year. If the report turns out to be true, it will be evident that Google has taken this step to compete with Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system (Windows 8) that have touch screens, even as the new Chrome devices would also compete with devices powered by Google’s own operating system—Android.

Notwithstanding the fact that Chrome notebooks haven’t seen much success, the fact remains that companies have to be on the cutting edge of technology to survive. Take the case of Research in Motion Inc., now renamed BlackBerry. It was a leader in the enterprise market, but with the ‘Bring Your Own Device’ or BYOD trend wherein employees are permitted to use their personal devices for official use (of course, with security enablers), RIM lost marketshare rapidly and has had to introduce a new platform—BB10—to stay in the race.

Thorsten Heins, president and chief executive officer of BlackBerry, maintains that his company is preparing itself for the age of mobile computing that will introduce users to the Internet of Things (devices communicating with each other) world. Laptops will disappear eventually, he claims, and the mobile computing device will thus become an access device. It may help you update your car software—around 60% of car software runs on QNX (RIM acquired QNX from Harmen International in April 2010. Heins says he will invest in this vision of mobile computing while not disrupting the existing business.

Frankly, Heins has no choice but to do so. And neither do Google, Facebook or any other company for that matter.

One only has to take a look at the way the supremacy of Yahoo! was challenged by Google, which made the word ‘search’ almost synonymous with its name. Microsoft did wake up later with its own Bing. In the social networking segment, Facebook usurped Google’s Orkut (which is strong only in Brazil) and now has almost 1 billion users. With its job search, it’s now theatening to destablise traditional job portals and professional networking sites such as LinkedIn.

These remain but cases in point. When disruptive technologies like quantum computing and molecular computing gradually get out of the labs and justify commercialization, we will see the world with new eyes, the way Google glasses is making ”augmented reality” (simply put, adding layers of information on devices) appealing and affordable to the masses.

Simultaneously, cellphones that were as big as bricks almost a decade ago are becoming bigger again. So we have 5- and 6-inch phones or phablets as they’re called on the one hand, while we have smaller, sleeker feature phones and, of course, the 7- and 10-inch tablets that compete with notebooks and desktops.

Now with the convertibles that include notebooks and detachable tablets in a single device, the pitch is getting increasingly queered and consumers are being spoilt for choice.

Also, while the cellphone is becoming smarter and doubling up as your radio and television while giving you the Internet at your fingertips, your TV is also becoming smart by including the Internet and adding gadgets like Apple TV (from Apple Inc.) or Evo TV (from Amkette). And notebooks are getting their touch screens, similar to smartphones. And it won’t be long before we begin seeing more ‘Sixth Sense’ (made famous by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or MIT’s Pranav Mistry) devices that will project information on walls, or any surface for that matter.

What will happen to our cellphones, notebooks, convertibles, TVs, then? One school of thought says these devices will converge and yet be divergent since they fulfil different needs. That may be true today but unlikely to stay so in the future.

Of course, these are simply the beginnings of the ”Internet of Things” phenomenon wherein your fridge will inform the vendor that it needs beverages or groceries or whatever. Likewise, your car will perform a self-diagnosis and inform your service centre of the same. Your imagination will be the only limit. Companies are watching these trends since they need to survive. Individuals need to pay attention too since they may be rendered redundant with cellphones that have artificial intelligence or AI or algorithm-based robots that put traders out of a job.