This week's Economist writes: Phones are the new cars in it's Leaders section, meaning that we should look what happened to cars to make a few predictions about the phones of the future.

Phones, like cars, are fashion items: people generally replace them long before they actually wear out.

I would add, phones like cars, are status symbols. In populations and areas where people can't afford cars, they will replace them with phones.

Phones are unquestionably the most personal, the most social and the most rapidly evolving technological devices on earth, and are likely to change as dramatically in the next decade, as they have in the previous one.

That's why Mobile 2.0 makes so much sense.

Swiss Army Knife or optimised device for a particular task

The phone of the future

In short, Bruce Sterling believes that the phone will be “the remote-control for life”.

as opposed to:

Already, the clear trend in phone design is towards ever greater diversity. The debate over whether the phone would emerge as the digital “Swiss Army Knife” and cram in as many features and functions as possible is over, says Bruno Giussani, the author of “Roam”, a book about the mobile industry. Instead, handset-makers now make different devices optimised for particular tasks such as music, photography or e-mail, and combinations thereof.

Personally I see the phone clearly as a Swiss Army Knife or as a remote-control for life than as a optimised device for a particular task. That's why the iPod, albeit one of the most interesting mobile devices today due to it's convergence model (bringing together a mobile device with the broadband pc) simplicity and design, will come under a lot of pressure, if it remains what it is.

That the Swiss Army Knife approach was too early in 2001 has a lot to do with the business smartphone angle here in Europe. Japan's mobile success showed that design, simplicity and usability are key elements in an early market. Once people understand the paradigm, you can start to add more sophistication.
Also instead of targeting sophisticated business users, you should add immediate value for everyone.

So I think we are right now at the antithesis point of the story being examplified by iPods, RAZR's and Chocolate's. But I am confident that the synthesis will come, as I don't see people carry around multiple devices on a daily basis. (Already now I see less iPod's in the streets than six months ago, but I still see mobile phones all over the place.)

Phones will remain different on the surface, something they already are as much as cars. But as with cars, the most widely used phones start resembling each other more and more - on a technical as well as on design level.

As the mobile now also enters an era where more and more people will start producing content and for the mobile web and for the classic web, the pressure to use standards and to be more standard-compliant will accrue.

It is significant in this regard that three major handset manufacturers - Nokia, Motorola, MS with Windows Mobile opted all for QR Codes instead of inventing their own proprietory format.