Friday, February 26, 2016

The mobile is dead, long live the phone! – Parentesis

I have good news and bad news. Let’s start with the bad so we took the rapid ballast: smartphones have reached their ceiling. Well, now we go with speed to good. Smartphones have peaked

Complete the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and while walking through the streets eating patatas bravas and dreaming be Iniesta, I think a good conclusion of the event, which brought together this year to 100 thousand people, is as follows: big business smartphone betting exit the cell to continue making money , attract new users and expand its share in a market each . increasingly crowded and complicated, with a birthday cake that has increasingly larger portions and guests but less profit

Let me explain: Where is the most innovative new cell that presented Samsung, Sony, Lenovo or LG? Outside the smartphone. It happens that, with an increasingly standard design, brighter screens, similar memory and processors, two operating systems (Android or Apple) and photos and videos on a pretty decent amount of pixels, companies need to generate more and more accessories around devices to seduce the pockets of its users. See examples:

The star of the launch of the Korean Samsung was not the Galaxy S7 (almost identical to its predecessor) but the Oculus virtual reality (VR) and Mark Zuckerberg telling that Facebook users see each more videos 360. Incidentally, Gear presented their little camera 360 to take pictures and videos . Same as LG, another Korean company, which together with its G5 (removable to change the battery) presented their VR helmet a robot (Rolling Bot) ball to control our home and remote pet and your little camera 360. Even They went beyond the Smart Controller, a sort of joystick to handle some drones in a very simple way. All this, of course, is sold separately.

the company Alcatel (in the hands of the Chinese TCL) was more creative and literally thought “ out of the box “. The new Idol 4 S (the largest) will, for the same price, in a box which in turn are the glasses for VR. Japanese Sony, with little luck on their Xperia and smartwatch, begin to try other products . I liked a small camera that takes pictures automatically when it detects movement and faces without us having to look at a screen or click. also they showed the Ear , a smart Bluetooth headset that connects to the phone and lets you hear notifications and music, talking on the phone and activate functions by voice, without using the mobile screen. (Remember the movie Her ? Shall the Ear with the unforgettable voice hoarse Scarlett Johansson?)

And I do not want to forget the huge number of smart watches I saw in the MWC that, along with the smart bands, wearables fit and similar devices, 24 hours interacting with our body and mobile. Incidentally, despite the forecasts, a recent study by Strategy Analytics said that smart watches first time outsold all Swiss watches . During 2015 8.1 million watches were shipped with operating systems (63% is the Apple Watch) against 7.9 Swiss. One thing to consider.

I return to Barcelona. Another point to differentiate themselves is that companies often use different types of agreements with other prestigious brands. In Mobile, LG introduced its partnership with the Danish Bang & amp; Olufsen for its new models have HD sound. They also showed their (very good) H3 headphones. President Juno Cho, said the company will continue to develop new collaborations with other brands to define new standards of innovation. And another partnership more: Leica legendary German and Chinese giant Huawei will join forces to develop technology for photography in smartphones. For all this I mention, we live in a crowded MWC words that so far had no direct link with which it was customary to see in this event: The Internet of Things, electronic payments, wearables, autonomous cars, virtual reality, robots, cities and smart watches and several more.

as for the cell and its possible plateau (some speak of stagnation, I would not be so dramatic), we’ll talk about real innovation when the batteries reach the end of the day without having to resort to such heinous portable chargers . Undoubtedly, one of the protagonists during the four days in Barcelona


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