The Future of Mobile: From the Emerging Technologies Conference

Here's some video I shot at last week's Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT. It features two local executives (Google's Rich Miner and Motorola's Liz Altman) talking about where mobile is headed -- especially with regard to open and proprietary operating systems. (This took place a day or two after the official announcement of the first Google/Android phone.)



Some notes from the panel (not direct quotes):

Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch: It's still too expensive to develop an application that runs across a broad range of phones.

Liz Altman: Low-end phones will use proprietary operating systems.

Rich Miner: Agrees with that, but says mid-range phones are getting more capable, and will be compatible with the Android operating system before long.

Miner: Google will try to avoid bloatware - aim for simplicity - even as phones get more capable.

Lynch says that "thought interfaces" will be a promising way to interact with mobile devices in the future. Miner is bullish on speech, and mentions Vlingo, a Cambridge start-up. The idea of scanning barcodes of products to get more info about a product also comes up.