CHICAGO—A presenter at the opening of 4G World this morning focused on the need for contextual awareness as a way of enriching the mobile experience.
Zeus Kerravala, senior vice president at Yankee Group, described ways in which context can add depth and breadth to the mobile Internet in a way that will vastly differentiate it from the traditional Internet. By context, he means a combination of location, identity, presence, modality and personalization.
"If we can add some context to some of the things we're doing, that will be the thing that drives the mobile Internet going into the future," Kerravala said, citing recent research from the Yankee Group that concluded basic phone calls and texts are still the primary uses of the mobile phone.
Kerravala outlined a number of myths about the mobile Internet that seem to persist. For instance, many say that developers are hampered because mobile devices are constraining. But Kerravala wants to turn that notion on its head, suggesting that mobile has its own unique strengths upon which developers need to capitalize.
Kerravala noted that by leveraging the vast contextual assets of the mobile space, applications like augmented reality will offer users a rich experience going forward. Imagine a handset that can identify a person using facial recognition, and then project onto their body the information that is known about them, such as whether or not they are an enrolled student on a college campus.
From the use of multiple modes of communications – Web, SMS, audio, video, e-mail –to the ability to recognize location and user information, Kerravala insisted that developers have it all at their fingertips to provide a mobile experience that is useful as well as versatile.
"We're on the verge of something really exciting here, and I just hope that people take the time to think about how to develop for mobile Internet of the future," Kerravala said.