Image is Everything in Mobile

I can’t help but feel that there will be really rich mobile applications to come, especially after seeing:

1. Opening of the 700MHz spectrum and allowing open-source applications.

2. Nokia announcing it’s image-based search.

3. And of course, when you watch a demo like this one of Photosynth, you can’t help but get that tingly feeling that all of the images in the world that exist today can be used to recreate some crazy virtual environments.

Coupled with mapping technologies and social services like delicious or Flickr, one can only think of the possibilities.

It seems that the market is just waiting for such technologies. The only problem is that there doesn’t exist a product other than the iPhone that makes mobile web technologies all that useable at the moment.

This should all change soon though, only after third-party applications become more widespread for the iPhone, Google releases it’s gOS, and Verizon starts to get aggressive with the data plans it provides.

I feel that there will be three key features that have to be implemented soon in the US mobile market for there to be better adoption of mobile applications:

1. Better web-browsing functionality

2. Enabling barcode readers in phones and allowing for subsequent image-based search

3. Social applications which take images of products or places and convert them into relevant information already existing on the web – physical search

For example, a better way of shopping at Border’s would be to take a picture of the ISDN# and have book reviews from Amazon instantly appear on my phone. I should also be able to create wish lists as I walk by the hordes of products we’re bombarded with using my mobile phone.

We’ll have to wait and see what happens in the mobile market, but integration of existing web technologies is crucial. It’s all about the information that we can get to our mobile phones, quickly and accessibly.