Having diverted itself of direct involvement in the mobile handset market, Ericsson is free to speculate on the future capabilities of cellphones. But not being a company known for fanciful exuberance, its ideas on where this particular segment of the cellular industry might be in four years time is not to be ignored.
Perhaps the most eye-catching specification of this future handset would be a 20 Megapixel full HD video camera, a XGA resolution display (1024x768 pixels), a processor rated at 1GHz and with a mobile broadband connection as fast as 100Mbps. (No comment made on the battery capacity/size needed to support such a device).
While technically possible, which consumer segment would find such a device attractive is unclear. While Apple, Google and RIM have demonstrated that relatively sophisticated smartphones can be positioned to appeal to a broader market segment than the enterprise user, the volumes will remain relatively low.
Putting this level of technology into a single device might be questionable, but segmentation and packaging is paramount--so sometime around the 2012 Olympics expect to see handsets with some of these capabilities, but perhaps not all.
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