TOKYO –The future of the world is in your hands. It’s a phrase that used to be just a joke but has become more of a reality in this increasingly mobile world. Smart phones and their users’ expectations will be a driving force behind many of the services and lifestyle changes in the next few years, according to a survey recently done by carrier network equipment maker Ericsson.
More than 80 per cent of some 7,500 iPhone and Android handset users surveyed in five major cities around the world said expect that services such as mobile reservations for restaurant dining and leisure activities, in-store mobile navigation, contextual pharmaceutical, childcare and elderly care services and mobile-based personal traffic navigation systems will be common place in the next three years, according to the survey results released here on Tuesday by Ericsson’s Consumer Lab.
The smart phone users, aged 15 to 69, are representative of 40 million people. The respondents, which came from Sao Paulo, Beijing, New York, London and Tokyo, were asked how smart phone-related services influenced their satisfaction of living in their municipalities and what were the most positive and negative aspects of city life.
“We are headed for an extreme app demand of a projected growth of about five times what we have today,” said Cecilia Atterwell, head of the lab, told reporters. “This is a call out to government agencies, device manufacturers, carriers and businesses that if they intend to remain relevant to their clientele, they need to be prepared to roll out these type of mobile services within the next three to five years.”
Atterwell was one of the speakers during an international media briefing at the opening of the Ericsson Business Innovation Forum. She said the looming demand is potentially a huge business opportunity for organizations prepared to invest mobile and information communication technologies (ICT).
The survey respondents identified ICT as a driver in three key activities that gave them satisfaction in living in the city: Shopping; eating out; and going to sports, entertainment and cultural events.
This is hardly a surprise, said Michael Bjorn, head of research at the lab. However the takeaway from the survey is that majority of respondents indicated that these activities are now largely driven by mobile services and applications.
“It illustrates how mass demand for new ICT services can change city life, beyond what we recognize, in just three years,” he said. “Smart phone services related to shopping, eating out and finding entertainment can drastically improve people’s satisfaction of life in cities.”
For example satisfaction with shopping is associated by respondents with same-day delivery for online bought goods, mobile navigation and stock tracking, and situational shopping recommendation
Dining out is tied with mobile menu and table reservation applications, mobile-based ingredient checkers, and social network-based restaurant recommendations.
Leisure activities are facilitated by mobile reservations, digital trainer apps and virtual play connectors.
“As many as 79 per cent of respondents use these services today in a limited way, but they expect these tools and services to be universally available in the next three years,” said Bjorn.
The respondents believe these services will be delivered by Internet companies, mobile carriers, business owners and manufacturers.
The respondents also mentioned three key factors of city living that provide them with difficulty and dissatisfaction:
- Lack of child care and elderly care
- Difficulty in communicating with authorities
- Traffic congestion
These are areas in which mobility and ICT can potentially solve, according to several guest speakers.
“For example, the home can become a platform for services and applications that can make life better for the elderly,” said Kenya Hara, professor at Musashino Art University and board member of the Japan Design Centre.
His group is proposing a radical shift to shared living spaces where up to 500 people could live in a residential building sharing some common facilities and spaces such as a home library, dining space and kitchen. The approach is not only meant to conserve scare resources but is also meant to address increasing difficulty of providing for elderly care in countries like Japan.
Apart from this, Hara said, architects, city planners and technology vendors can collaborate in developing “connected” houses fitted with sensors that track vital signs of a building and even its occupants. The sensors can be configured to raise context-based alerts to the appropriate organization.
Other technologies increasingly in the demand in the next three years will be:
- Connected food and medicine services the update families on the needs of their children or elderly relatives
- Mobile of online social care network
- Online near-care network that facilitates communication between extended families via devices
- Smart phone and PC communication with city services departments
- 24/7 online and mobile hotline for city information and services
- Personal navigator to aid in indoor and outdoor navigation
- Self-driving and self-parking vehicles
Hara admitted that sensors collecting private data from individuals raises some critical privacy concerns.
“The individuals concerned and the stakeholders will have decide what data can be collected and for what purpose will it be used,” he said.
Canadian carriers that use Ericsson equipment include Rogers Communications, Telus, Eastlink, SaskTel, MTS Allstream, Northwestel and Mobilicity.