The curious thing about predicting trends in mobile phones is that, in an important sense, the future is already here but we have not yet come to terms with it. This is not surprising. No other consumer product in history has changed so rapidly or gained popularity as fast as the mobile phone. Ten years ago when the phone was an expensive, luggable brick, flaunted by flamboyant car owners, no one predicted the explosive growth that took annual sales from £6m in 1991 to £403m in 2000.
For £100 you can now buy one that weighs less than 100g and packs the computing power that would have filled an office block 30 years ago. Technology is moving so fast that you can date movies almost to the month by the mobile phones being used.
Mobiles, unlike any other device, have been gobbling up other products so fast that we haven't been able to adjust our lifestyles to them. Take the wristwatch. You don't need it any more: the screen of your mobile - it is with you 24 hours a day - will tell you the time, warn you of meetings and wake you up in the morning. But people still wear watches because they can't shed something that has been, in Marshall McLuhan's words, an extension of themselves.
You can now buy mobiles that include a radio, an MP3 (digital music) player, a diary, a calendar, a camera, an embryonic video camera, a calculator, a note pad, a word processor, a spreadsheet, a modem, a voice recorder, a web browser, an emailer, a text messaging device, a games arcade, a thermometer, a contacts book and a barcode reader, not to mention satellite tracking devices that can calculate where you are to within a few metres. That amounts to 20 different products you could have bought separately but which are now packaged together in one device. I am told it can also be used to speak to other human beings. It will never catch on.
Where is it all going? The mobile is the first interactive device that people carry with them everywhere. Your phone knows who you are and where you are. Technology, including miniaturisation, is still progressing at an awesome pace. But the shape of the phone in future will depend not on technology but on what consumers want.
We are now in the midst of the second generation (2G) phase and this Christmas we will be bombarded with "smart" multimedia phones that can take and transmit photos and polyphonic ringtones.
Coming shortly is 3G technology enabling you to see the person you are speaking to live on the screen or watch Premier League goals soon after they are scored. (The three Gs stand for girls, gaming and gambling, according to wags in the industry who know how hi-tech is usually led by base consumer demand.)
It is a small step to turn your phone into a television or a video camera (2G phones can already take video clips). No one wants to buy a radio, a camera or a miniature TV if it means carrying an extra bit of equipment around all the time. But if they come as built-in extras on a lightweight phone, that is different. Radio will enjoy a second renaissance (the first was the in-car radio) as a result of the mobile phone.
Mobiles are getting better at linking with the internet after the disaster of the first generation Wap (wireless application protocol) phones. Soon you will be able to access most web addresses or web cameras in the world (you can already look at webcams on your phone to check out traffic jams). You will be able to check your children's nursery through a secure web camera while you are at work to see if they are all right, take in a live lecture at a remote university, answer the door or switch off the lights at home from anywhere in the world - as long as the device has a unique web address. They will, they will.
Remote diagnostics will become much easier - you could point the video camera on the phone towards that nasty sore throat so your GP can comment without you having to leave your holiday beach bar.
There is no reason why a mobile phone should not incorporate a telescope, an electric shaver or become a weapon of self defence in case you are attacked.
Television has explored the possibilities of interactivity with text messaging but it would move on to a different plane if people at home, thanks to powerful videophones, could be part of the live action on the screens. The home would become an extension of the studio. But then so will life itself once there are miniaturised cameras everywhere. Crimewatch will be given a new lease of life.
Phones with optical or barcode readers could enable newspapers and magazines to be interactive as well (besides providing them with a new revenue stream). A newspaper could become an extension of the web because a phone with an optical reader could access a website merely by passing the phone over a web address (URL) while reading an article (for example, to get a video clip of the goals mentioned in the piece or to see the inside of a house advertised). As the screens on phones get bigger people might start reading books on them (press a single button and the next paragraph will arrive) while waiting at the bus stop. You already can with PDAs (personal digital assistants).
You can already control your phone (through Bluetooth short-distance wireless technology) without taking it out of your pocket. As wireless technology improves, new things will be possible. If you were being mugged you could activate your phone (by means of a simple command like "Oh, no") to take continuous photos of your assailant which would be automatically emailed to a website or to the police. Locational devices linking to satellites will enable you or your children to be continuously monitored wherever you go, with all the advantages and disadvantages of that.
The technology will soon exist to enable you to keep a continuously updated record of practically everything you do in your life (talk and movement) on your personal website.
Within 10 years your phone may become your main way of paying bills - allowing you to ditch all those credit cards. The technology is already there - it just needs to be made simple and secure to use. One day, business will realise the colour screen on the mobile is the most coveted bit of advertising real estate in the world.
The phone itself will also change - from being in your hand to being in your body. Thanks to short distance wireless transmission the initial call could come to a small base station attached to a belt listened to from a tiny device in your ear. You will never know whether the person walking down the street is talking to himself or to someone in Los Angeles. The phone itself could migrate to a ring on your finger or to your watch. Eventually it will be so small that it will fit invisibly inside your ear, picking up what you are saying from the vibrations through your bones.
It is probable that the biggest change will be something that isn't self-evident (as mobiles were not 10 years ago) but, with the benefit of hindsight, was blindingly obvious all along. One candidate is the controversial network of base stations dotted around the country. They may shrink so much that they can be incorporated into the phone itself unleashing a new wave of possibilities. The real revolution has not yet begun.
