Mobile Messaging Isn’t Just About Mobiles
by Ewan Spence
I’ve been watching the posts on the idea of what is a mobile message and the surprising thing to me is that we’re almost all focused on the mobile phone as being the receiving platform. When we consider the technology on sale this festive season, I think it’s wrong to assume that the smartphone will be the sole preserve for mobile messaging.
Some of the biggest technology sellers this year have messaging included in them, but seem to slip under the radar. Two significant examples in my mind are both in the portable gaming sector; the Sony Playstation Portable and the Nintendo DS. While the devices are primarily set p for gaming, they both are showing the way forward for connected consumer electronics.
The Nintendo DS ships with a built in messaging client, able to talk to any other DS within range, as well as being able to play both local multiplayer games over wi-fi, and also multiplayer over the internet via connected hot-spots. The PSP goes even further, coming bundled with a full flash-enabled web browser, and an RSS podcast to automatically download audio and video.
Heck the iPod touch is nothing more than a glorified MP3 player, yet it carries a web browser that lets you grab email online, use an instant message client and do all those message-y things we’re talking about.
The common factor in all of this is the Wi-Fi connectivity, not a GSM signal to a mobile phone, and I’m sure we’ll see more and more electronics in the next few years being ‘internet aware’ and the opportunities presented by that are going to drive huge changes in mobile messaging. What shape we’ll end up with, well that’s going to make the journey interesting.
