A look back at some predictions for mobile services from 2000 (VIDEO)

Watching this video from Google left me impressed: For the first time, in one slick user experience, a company has combined previously siloed functionality to give you all you need in a simple all encompassing app:
  • Great mapping, now in 3D + street view
  • Location of you and your friends
  • Search
  • Places, reviews, information, ratings, calling
  • Directions and turn by turn navigation
It also triggered a long lost memory of some work I was involved in 10 years ago. As we are coming up to the end of the year and the traditional time of reflection, it feels like a good time to share this. Especially as 2010 closes my first decade in mobile data services. Even more impressive is I had hung onto the original CD (no DVD's back then!), AND it still worked when I popped it into the drive to rip! The video was created by the BT Cellnet Marketing team, back in 2000. BT Cellnet was the predecessor to O2, a leading European Mobile Operator, now part of the Telefonica group. The aim of the video was to try and capture how high speed mobile data services could change people’s lives. Some of it does look a little comical now, some 10 years down the line. That said some of it even now still remains pretty visionary. It’s easy to forget what 2000 was like; a world before broadband, smart phones and social networking. The UK 3G license auctions had taken place in the middle of the dot com bubble bursting, BT Cellnet itself had oversold WAP as “the mobile internet” with the infamous “Surf the BT Cellnet” ad campaign, and the most impressive device on the streets was the Nokia 7110, famously heavily promoted in the Matrix movie.
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Forget the luxury of the Android vs iPhone debate!! In the video you will see:
  • Very British accents!
  • Interesting device form factors. Fascinating that it was relativity 'easy' to forecast how software would develop, but massively underestimate where the hardware would be in 10 years time. I especially love the video phone at 1:41 which I have used as the title frame!
  • Voice interaction
  • Routing video to any screen, controlled from the mobile device
  • Interactive travel booking – flights and taxis
  • Video conferencing
  • Mapping
  • An interesting wheel based conceptual phone UI
  • Delivery of services to car / home / gaming devices
How a decade of working in mobile has flown by! I wonder what 2020 will look like?
Tagged 3G BT Cellnet Google Mobile Operators data services mobile mobile internet
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