Next Generation Wireless Applications: Creating Mobile Applications in a Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0 World, 2nd Edition

2.1 WHAT DOES ‘NEXT GENERATION’ MEAN?

Historically, most of the commercial activities of mobile operators have been dominated by voice and text-messaging (texting) services. No matter how these are delivered, whether by a GSM (i.e. 2G) or a Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems (UMTS, i.e. 3G) network, this basic service portfolio represents the previous generation of mobile services. What we have been slowly (very slowly) moving towards is a next generation of services where the kinds of experience described in Chapter 1 become more commonplace and the mobile experience is no longer dominated by any one particular application. Essentially, the first three generations of mobile networks technology were largely about improving the mobilisation of voice (telephony), but the future evolution (next generation) of networks and related technologies is about the mobilisation of data. As a good deal of our data is increasingly bound to services on the Internet, we can obviously expect that the Internet will figure a great deal in the future of mobile. However, I wouldn't go so far as to characterise the future of mobile as being essentially the mobilised Internet. It is probably better to think of the future as the mobilisation of computing (including embedded computing), but likely to remain communications-centric rather than general purpose.

Another way to think about ‘next generation’ wireless applications is shown in Figure 2.1. The figure shows the explosion of technologies ...