Emerging Mobile Technologies and Issues

The emerging 3rd generation (3G) mobile systems are expected to provide a wide variety of voice and data services, supporting data rates of up to 2 Mbps. The next generation mobile/cellular systems are being designed to operate on a core IP (Internet Protocol) network, supporting all the popular operating systems and software applications. They are expected to support mobile rates of 100 Mbps, and fixed rates of 1Gbps. Also, the mobile phones have been transformed from mere voice communication devices to advanced communication devices (voice, text and video messaging). In addition, they have acquired features of consumer electronics (with built-in cameras, MP3 players, video capture and play), and computing (email, Web access, spread sheets). The emerging and future mobile systems facilitate the provision of rich multimedia content services, such as TV broadcasts, video streaming, music, video telephony, multimedia messaging, Web browsing, mobile commerce, and (multi-party) games, mobile collaboration, and several location-based services. The worldwide mobile content market is expected reach $59 Billion by 2009, according to Juniper Research. The development and deployment of content, applications, and services have been transforming from being technology-centric to being content-centric and user-centric. The ultimate objective of mobile content and services is to provide the users with a rich experience in a convenient and cost-effective manner, and to provide the mobile vendors, operators, and service providers with appropriate ROI (return on investment).