The Telegraph reports that Martin Cooper, lead engineer of the Motorola team that developed the mobile phone, told a privacy conference in Madrid that today's phones try to do many things for too many people. The 80 year old said, “Whenever you create a universal device that does all things for all people, it does not do any things well. Our future I think is a number of specialist devices that focus on one thing that will improve our lives”. Mr Cooper, who has previously criticised the iPhone for being overly complicated and hard to use.
However, recent sales figures contradict Cooper’s assertions. While in 2007, Nokia's simple 1100 was the world's top-selling gadget, over the past year sales of smartphones have risen by 140 per cent over the past year, accounting for close to one in ten phones bought according to GfK market research.
Dr Jon Agar, senior lecturer in science and technology studies at UCL and author of ‘Constant Touch: A Global History of the Mobile Phone’, argued that users prefer more features on a single gadget than more gadgets with more specialised features. “Martin Cooper's assertion flies in the face of current trends, and I see no particular evidence to suggest that the trend towards more 'universal' mobile phones is going to change direction".But Ben Wood, director of research at CCS Insight, said the “technology arms race is starting to slow down now, and that there would always be a market for the simpler “talk and text phones”. Source: Telegraph, 6 November, 2009. tinyurl.com/y8kz4lz
No comments:
Post a Comment