Ambient Insight tracks four major areas of mobile technology: hardware and infrastructure, system software, applications and content, and the user experience. We track the demand-side and the supply-side of the Mobile Information Technology supply chain. We analyze the buying behavior by eight buyer segments: consumer, PreK-12 academic, higher education, corporate, state and local government, federal government, NGOs and non-profits, and healthcare.

Ambient Insight's Mobile Information Technology Taxonomy

• Mobile Hardware and Infrastructure
• Mobile System Software and Development Tools
• Mobile Applications, Tools, and Content
• The Mobile Persona and User Experience

The current business climate for Mobile Information Technology products and services could hardly be more favorable. There is a very large user demographic in place; there are a growing number of sophisticated handheld multimedia devices on the market; operating systems and applications have become quite powerful in terms of functionality and features; innovative user interfaces are now available that mitigate the challenges of the small form factor: and the US is rolling out next-generation high-speed wireless technology at a rapid pace.

Mobile Hardware and Infrastructure

The average smartphone in 2007 is as powerful in terms of memory, storage, and processing speed as a desktop PC was in 2002. Within 2-3 years device vendors will phase out basic phone handsets and stand-alone PDAs. There is a rapid pace of convergence now with handhled computing devices assimilating voice, video, radio, TV, media players, navigation, barcode scanning, digital photography, and collaboration technology.

In Europe and Asia mobile videoconferencing and mobile collaboration are quite common. This technology is now being marketed in the US and is most prevalent in the massively distributed multi-user mobile gaming market.

Legacy real-time collaboration technology such as Web conferencing, audio conferencing, and video conferencing is rapidly being “ported” to mobile formats. Fourth generation learning technology will be a hybrid of real-time collaboration and mobile technologies. Dominant device makers such as Apple, Nokia, and HTC are rolling out very powerful multimedia smartphones that are designed to be multi-purpose computing devices. Nokia refers to their new smartphone product line as "multimedia computers."

The US is rolling out next-generation high-speed data wireless technology at a rapid pace. Wide-scale rollouts of fixed wireless broadband and so-called 3G (third generation) cellular networks began in 2005 in the US. The carrier waves are in place for mass-market sales of personal productivity products.

New 3G-4G technologies such as EV-DO Rev A and HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) are being rolled out now and provide a breathtaking data access rate averaging between 500kbps and 1Mbps. That makes 3G-4G competitive with landline-based broadband such as cable and DSL.

In the next 3-4 years there will be a significant rollout of fixed wireless broadband technologies such as Wi-Fi and WiMAX. The combined shortwave, longwave, cellular, and fixed wireless technologies will converge into so-called 4G networks by 2010-2011. The current definition of 4G is a technology that can modulate on-the-fly between and among any of the dozens of wireless technologies. This guarantees high-speed Web access to all connected mobile devices regardless of location or wireless technology.

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Mobile System Software and Development Tools

Deciding which platform to build on can be a significant challenge. Platform choices include Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, Symbian, Access’ Palm OS, Palm's new Linux OS, and RIM’s Blackbery platform. Apple entered the fray with iPhone in 2007. There are open source alternatives as well. In April 2007, the GNOME Foundation announced an open source development platform called GMAE (Gnome Mobile & Embedded).

There are new tools on the market that claim to export to several of the major platforms but in practice, custom “tweaking” for each platform is still required. Cross platform development tools include Appforge’s Crossfire, Trilibus' SmartPath, Sun’s JavaFX Mobile, Adobe’s Flash Lite, and QUALCOMM’s Brew.

There are now new Web 2.0 tools that allow users to create and share their own content. These tools represent the cutting edge of content development innovation.

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Mobile Applications, Tools, and Content

The US market for mobile applications, tools, and content is now over $7 billion. The consumer, corporate, and healthcare buyers dominate the market. There are a growing number of mobile applications now being sold in the US including personal productivity, workforce productivity, media authoring tools, search, widgets, messenging tools, search engines, RSS readers, mobile browsers, clinical decision support, field-based performance support, and location-based applications.

The amount of mobile content on the market is growing exponentially. There are now waves of mobile content hitting the market including music, video, radio, TV, ebooks, audiobooks, podcasts, mobile Web sites, RSS feeds, social networking sites, mobile blogs, mobile learning, movies, news, advertising, and rich interactive games.

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The Mobile Persona and The User Experience

Ambient Insight tracks revenue trends in the US for new mobile platforms, devices, tools, applications, content, and services. We watch for products that increase workforce productivity, provide contextual decision support, and enhance personal knowledge management.

We isolate the "mobile persona" of the buyers in each segment and categorize mobile user demographics based on buying behavior. The mobile device display is often called the "fourth screen" when industry analysts describe the progression from cinema, to television, to computer, and now to mobile devices. Ambient Insight specializes in analyzing work and learning on the fourth screen.

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For more information about our research, contact us at  info@ambientinsight.com.