The Smartphone of 2011 – Can it be your Netbook, eBook reader, digital media receiver (Apple TV, Roku), Digicam as well?

The leading smartphones of 2011 are going to have the following hardware features:
      – Dual Cortex-A9 processors running at 800Mhz to 1Ghz.
      – 32 to 64GBytes of Flash storage and copious amount of RAM memory
      – WVGA (800×480) or larger touchscreen
      – Second Display at 1080p (1920×1080) resolution via HDMI
      – Dual camera support with HD Video recording
      – GSM or CDMA, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, USB, FM, mic/speaker/headphone features

The software features will include:
      – Touchscreen capable OS like Android, iPhone, Symbian or Windows Mobile 7
      – Key features: Phone, Internet (HTML5 with Flash), Email, Media player, Camera
      – Support for 3rd party apps via app stores

Chips and development platforms with these features have already been available to OEMs from TI (Blaze MDP), ST-Ericsson (U8500) and others as of late 2009. Early products with these features will likely hit the market for 2010 Christmas sale or many products will be readily available in 2011.

Given these features, can these devices not serve as your Netbook or eBook reader if you had an external display & keyboard like this accessory?
When placed in a dock with a HDMI cable (and perhaps a USB HDD), can these devices not serve as your AppleTV, Roku Netflix streaming player or Boxee Box?

Wouldn’t this “smartphone” become your real “Personal Computer”? Why do you still need a Netbook or basic digital camera or digital media receiver?

Of course, you might still need a Mac and iTunes player to “sync” these devices to your PC.

Hype Cycle for Digital 3D – Will 3D become mainstream by 2015?

We are now in March 2010 in the post-”Avatar” world. Above timeline is my prediction of a hype cycle for Digital 3D.

We are in the early part of the cycle:
- Avatar released in Dec 2009 has triggered a huge hype and interest in Digital 3D technology, though 3D itself has a long history.
- At this year’s January, 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), lots of companies (technology, entertainment) interested in establishing a new market have announced new products – though there is no accepted standard.
- New standards like HDMI 1.4a announced in March 2010 are critical foundations for real 3D products.
- Early applications like entertainment (movies – Avatar, Alice in Wonderland, ESPN sports) show a lot of promise.
- Early products are too expensive like this $21,000 3D camera.

In the next stage of this hype cycle, real products need to be available. They need to become affordable. Then they will be really adopted by larger number of people.

I for one, hope to see applications like 3D Tourism become popular. I would really like to see Live or Realtime 3D Two-way communication – almost like Teleportation.

Schizophrenia of Wall Street

If you think about it, a good diagnosis for Wall Street’s “disease” might be Schizophrenia.

Think about the Stock Market and see if the following Wikipedia description is a good match:

“Schizophrenia from the Greek roots skhizein (σχίζειν, “to split”) and phrēn, phren- (φρήν, φρεν-; “mind”) is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a neuropsychiatric and mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality. It most commonly manifests as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking with significant social or occupational dysfunction.”

Here is one good example of a “split mind”:
        – Wall Street loves layoffs done by most well-run companies. Ex: “Microsoft layoffs would be good for stock“
        – But, Wall Street wants to see unemployment rate decrease. Ex: “Job creation is fundamentally important“

How do you (“Wall Street”) expect the economy to improve and stocks to go up, if you want companies to layoff employees to increase profits?

As soon as the current recession started, lots of companies immediately started huge layoffs to make the stock market happy. And now the stock market wants Jobs to be created magically so that stocks will increase !

On a related note, I was impressed when the Indian Govt (then-FM Chidambaram and PM Manmohan Singh) requested the large companies to “keep your market share, keep your loyal workers with you and take a price cut” and to a large extent major Indian companies did their best. I was surprised Obama never made such an appeal to the US companies to avoid layoffs and is only fighting in the Congress/Senate on a Jobs bill.