New technologies like HSDPA will make the mobile Internet a close cousin of wired broadband.

Kashminder Singh

Since this is my first column for this year, I thought I’d write about some of the things we’d be doing this year using mobile technology.

The mobile phone will remain the device of the moment and will continue to increasingly take over many duties we had done on other devices.  

Along that vein, expect to see less dedicated MP3 players sold as mobile phones become your music player of choice. Sound quality is going to get a lot better on mobile phones. Many companies tried to come up with iPod killers and failed; the mobile phone will kill it off effortlessly.

Similarly, picture taking will increasingly be done with your mobile phones. When 5 to 8 megapixel cameras arrive in droves, as they will later this year, the only advantage regular digicams will retain would be the flash and manual settings. But you already know that.

The big thing really is going to be video recording. The only barrier to video recording is storage space as a lot is needed to store video movies on mobile phones. However a combination of bigger memory on phones especially on hard-disk based phones and better compression software should allow users to seriously move into video recording. Squatgate was only the beginning, we are all going to turn into movie makers soon.

More people are going to use their mobile phones to surf the Net. The only thing holding people back are high data access charges and relatively slow network speeds experienced even on supposedly fast 3G networks. New technologies like HSDPA will make the mobile Internet a close cousin of wired broadband.  That will leave price as the only real entry barrier. That too, in my opinion, will be addressed. I expect unlimited data access packages at between RM50 to RM88 per month later this year.

This will, dare I say it, lead to more people hopping onto the 3G bandwagon. I was sceptical about 3G take-up in 2005 and I was proven right. This time around I expect robust 3G subscriber growth in the later half of this year. A few things are going to drive this process. Better 3G handsets at lower prices will attract people who have been waiting to change their sets. Also, the aforementioned lower telco charges. Don’t underestimate the impact the World Cup will have. That’s sure to bring a lot of people into the 3G fold.

Quite a number of us are going to start watching TV on our mobile devices when digital mobile TV arrives later this year. If telcos can keep their rates reasonably low, mobile TV will be big.

Your phone will also become a credit or charge card. If I can walk into a store and buy a pair of shoes for RM200 and get it billed into my mobile phone account, why would I want to carry a card to do the same thing? I think we are going to see this happen this year. Maybe not for a pair of shoes yet but at least for stuff like movie tickets.

Not everything will be as desirable as the above items. Be prepared for more spam on mobile phones as advertisers scramble to get their messages across. Parents will have more to worry too as their children will have yet another personal route to undesirable material like pornography.

We also won’t see things we have been looking forward to for so long. The dream of nationwide coverage will remain just that; a dream. We can also keep on dreaming of fully subsidised phones. WiMax won’t be big this year – that’s more likely to make an impact in 2007. Lastly, despite what you have been hearing lately, your monthly phone bills are not going to get much lower. Sure, calls and text messages will become cheaper but that will be offset by the extra charges you will pay for new services.

Actually we may not even see much of what I expect if telcos don’t change their mindsets. I am making one major assumption: that telcos would have learnt something from 2005. And that is, borrowing words from Dato Seri Lim Keng Yaik himself, that telcos will have gained the vision to see “that it may be necessary to lose 2 sen today to make a hundred ringgit tomorrow”.