At the 10th anniversary commemoration of IBM’s India Research Lab, the company today unveiled a new initiative to bring even more features and functions to mobile devices as they continue to rival the PC as the primary tool for Web-based business, education, communication, entertainment and more.
The new IBM Research program will entail a number of efforts to bring simple, easy-to-use services to the millions of people in the world who have bypassed using the personal computer as their primary method of accessing technology, and are instead using their mobile phone to access the web, conduct financial transactions, entertain themselves, shop and more.
“The world is entering the ‘Era of the Mobile Web.’ In many countries, the mobile phone has become an electronic wallet, the window to the World Wide Web, an education device and more, and globally, mobile devices outnumber PCs, credit cards, and TVs,” said Dr. Daniel Dias, Director, IBM India Research laboratory. “Today, we are launching projects that will make a mobile device an even easier to use than the PC, allowing you to do everything you can with a PC and much more.”
The projects, which will be led out of India, but also are being incubated in IBM’s eight global labs in six countries, include:
- The Spoken Web - Voice-enabled mobile commerce
- Instant Translation - Real-time communication between multiple languages through mobile devices
- SoulPad - Enabling any portable device to carry computing applications in your pocket
- Social networking on-the-go
- Good Samaritan - Mobile healthcare information made available in any emergency situation
For the past 10 years, IBM’s India Research Lab has worked with local clients and partners to shape India’s innovation landscape, helping transform it into a significant contributor to the world economy. Now, the India Research team will serve as IBM’s catalyst for delivering new mobile web solutions to emerging markets around the world.
IBM Research examines in great depth the current trajectories of new technologies in the lab and marketplace, concentrating on trends that could be disruptive or the harbingers of change. In many regions, mobile devices are becoming an increasingly viable alternative to PCs. These devices are capable of delivering more types of data, applications and services through advanced wireless networks. This, coupled with the openness and convergence of Web applications, is making a major impact on the global mobile market.
“Today, staying competitive means looking ahead. The rise of globalization is shifting the way business works,” said John Kelly, Senior Vice President, IBM Research. “Business leaders need to anticipate how these changes will affect their ways of operating and look to new technological innovations to help them succeed in this new landscape.”
An innovative initiative currently being piloted by the India Research team is the “Spoken Web” project, which aims to transform how people create, build and interact with e-commerce sites on the World Wide Web using the spoken word instead of the written word. The Spoken Web is the World Wide Web in a telecom network, where people can host and browse “VoiceSites,” traverse “VoiceLinks,” even conduct business transactions, all just by talking over the existing telephone network.
For example, an average person on the street does not need a PC, but needs access to information such as:
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Fishermen need weather info before heading out to sea
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Farmers need to look up commodity prices
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Plumbers can schedule appointments, set up transfers to partners, use advertisements
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Grocery shops can display catalogues, offer order placement, display personalized targeted advertisements or reminders
Such locally relevant information is not available for a majority of world population. Computer access is not enough because there is a need to know what to look for, how to access it and how to use it.