What is your genuine opinion on the course of the mobile industry. What are your corporate hunches?

 

Do you think any of the big 3 manufactering companies are going to fold or merge together

What about the carriers? Are we going to one GSM vs one CDMA in the next decade?

 

Where do you want to see the mobile industry go? Are they ever going to implant transceivers in our jaws?

Voice out your opinions and what you want to see regarding the future of our industry. You never know... you might just get it right.

And if by some freak occurence you call it right, you get a cookie.

I don't believe companies will be merging together. Competition creates a flow of money. Plus I believe the general public likes having a choice and the feeling of different companies fighting for their business. The way the industry is headed right now Data is the new money maker. Phones with extra features are what is selling the most because that is what reps are pushing to make themselves money. Technology is what will save us from financial hardtimes, and when something is very money driven it moves quickly. The bottom line is we are in a great industry!

I could see Sprint being bought out by Verizon in the next few years or so....

Corporate mergers have not been beneficial for me. When Alltel was consumed by Verizon I lost coverage. My wife had Verizon through work and had to go outside to make calls. I had great coverage but now I too have to go outside for calls. All they did was reap the benefits of the Alltel name and their customers but did not keep Alltel's highly rated (Consumer's Report) services.

All I can say is that besides of the economic downturn we are dealing with mobile industry is still at its best

With Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile going to LTE 4G, CDMA will pretty much disappear in the US, and probably NA. Supposedly even MetroPCS is planning to migrate to LTE.

Sprint has already launched WiFi 4G.

I think VZW will be 'the one' since they are already part of Vodafone, a large European GSM provider. Once VZW deploys 4G LTE, your phone will truly be globally usable.

Further, smart phones running true OS like Windows, Android, Palm, etc. will really take off once 4G is widely available.

In the case of AT&T, they will probably have the best merging of Internet services with cell phones because of their large DSL market.

If anybody folds, it will be Sprint. I think LTE will prove to be better than WiFi.

Did I mention touch screen will be the dominant interface? Even with computers, touch, or virtual, keyboards (like in _Iron Man_ and _Star Trek TNG_) will become very common. I love my EnV Touch keyboard, since I text a lot, but soon a real keyboard will be lame. For example, the LG Versa gives you the option of attaching a keyboard, but the phone works very well in full touchboard mode. Rght, there's that other phone from the people who do the MacOS.