For the last few years, smartphones and cloud computing have been major trends in the tech industry. As venture capitalists are still heavily investing in companies which focus on these sectors, it's worth looking at how the two technologies relate.
Today many mobile applications depend on having an Internet connection to access and process data. In many respects, smartphones act as a portable tether to the Internet and the Cloud -- allowing people to access their data anywhere and allowing messages, notifications, and updates to access people wherever they might be.
For many companies, Cloud-style applications are the first sojurn into the mobile world, not the last. It's often much easier to put up a mobile-friendly webpage than it is to develop a dedicated smartphone app, with the result that their users still stay focused on the traditional "Cloud" interface of a dynamic web page.
Also part and parcel of this is the limited nature of smartphones. Though mobile processors and hardware are getting faster all the time, the computing horsepower of a smartphone is still stunted compared with normal desktop machines.
Therefore, the Cloud allows people to push their business and personal computational work onto far-off servers, giving them the equivalent functionality of a large server farm while carrying around a slim phone.
To be sure there are pitfalls to the new world of smartphone cloud computing. Without an Internet connection, the whole premise falls flat. Reliable high-speed mobile Internet connectivity is by no means ubiquitous, so for many users the "mobile Cloud" is still a recipe for frustration. Also, the mobile Cloud does nothing to eliminate the problems associated with traditional computing: security breaches are if anything a more serious threat than ever, as illustrated by the "Fappening" incident where hundreds of celebrities had their intimate private photos and personal details broadcast to the Internet, so, stay safe.
The Latest Trend: Screen Size
One of the major recent developments in smartphones is the consumer demand for larger screens. The trend represents an appetite for more information on a single display, and it remains to be seen how this will affect the Cloud industry.
According to an online survey of some 23,000 consumers conducted by Accenture in 23 different countries, about 57% (or 13,000) said they would be buying smartphones in 2014 or 2015. Some 6,250 of those buyers (48%) said they were leaning towards so-called "phablets," which is to say phones whose screens range from five to seven inches. (Traditional smartphones tend towards the iPhone screen form factor, which is to say in the four to five inches.)
The strongest interest in "phablets" comes from emerging markets, which is consistent with the concept of the device -- a combination of smartphone and tablet which can serve as both for buyers who can only afford to purchase one. Thus 67% of Indian smartphone buyers are looking at phablets, as well as 66% of buyers in China, 61% in Indonesia, and 65% in South Africa. For these consumers, who often cannot afford multiple devices, the best choice is the device with the largest screen they can afford.
Consumers who live in developed markets are not as enamoured with the large-screen concept, on the other hand. Among US consumers, just 40% of smartphone buyers are looking at phablets.
The lack of interest in developed markets may be one reason Apple has so far avoided larger screens. Until 2012 the iPhone carried a screen of just 3.5 inches, until the iPhone 5 finally expanded it to 4 inches.
This doesn't change the business calculus very much for many companies. Most so-called "flagship" phones (like the HTC One, or Samsung Galaxy S5) provide 5 inch screens at 1080p HD resolution. And, according to Accenture, the most lucrative large-screen smartphone opportunity is still to come in the form of China, which is already one of the largest smartphone markets in the world.
Samsung, the company which originally defined the "phablet" with the introduction of its large-screen Galaxy Note back in 2010, is already working to take advantage of this. Samsung's engineers are putting the final touches on the fourth generation Galaxy Note device with plans to introduce it in September. Device metadata has been spotted around the web, and benchmarks suggest it will offer incredible processing power.
For Cloud providers, in other words, the trend towards "phablets" is a mixed blessing. On one hand the large screens are ideal for displaying a great deal of information and taking full advantage of the back-end processing capabilities inherent to cloud computing. On the other hand, "phablets" are approaching tablets in terms of computing power, which suggests the pendulum may swing back to on-device computing instead.
source: http://www.buildyourbestcloud.com/
Great idea
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