The last couple of years have seen the emergence of a new type of mobile phone - the so-called smart phone which combines phone with hand-held computing functionality. Sales of these devices are growing at a rate of about 40% per year, outpacing PDA growth. Currently, around two million smart phones are sold per quarter. In all the devices available today, there are compromises to be made in terms of usability - but some of the best are made by Nokia and RIM.

My favourite smart phone of 2004, however, is the Sony Ercisson P910.  With the flip closed...

'Twas a couple of afternoons before Christmas, and as I'm sitting here, realising I'm rapidly running out of time to get my remaining Christmas shopping done, I find my mind wandering to the subject of my hopes and wishes for developments in mobile phone technology.   One thing's for sure - 2005 is set to be the year of the 3G mobile phone.   It's only a matter of time now before nice 3G smart phones (with great Java support!) begin to appear.

So I don't need to wish for that.  If I could ask Santa for one thing, it would be a good solution to the problem of data entry on mobile phones.  I don't want SMS style T-9 predictive input.  I don't really want hand-writing recognition (as impressive as it sometimes is).  And I don't even want fiddly little QWERTY keyboards, even though this is the probably the best solution we have right now.

No, what I want is something that lets people be as productive entering data on their phones, as they are at entering data on their PCs.   So... I wish... that this kind of technology (a full-size virtual keyboard, where an image of a keyboard is projected onto a flat surface by a laser, and you simply type on the image as you would a real keyboard)...




... is improved, minituriased, and integrated nicely into a Java-enabled Smart Phone.  Then we'd be cooking!


But enough of all that. Time for me to start really thinking about Christmas now.  I wish everyone out there a wonderful Christmas, and a prosperous New Year.  'Tis the season to be jolly, tra-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la...

I'm often asked why our main technology focus area is Java (J2ME for mobile devices).   One word. Volume. And volume wins. There are hundreds of millions of Java-enabled mobile phones out there already. And almost two BILLION Java-enabled devices in general.

First things first. A short introduction is order. I'm the CEO of Psynixis, a software company specialising in the development of (Java) software for mobile phones. I will be updating this blog often enough to try make it interesting (although you, the reader, will naturally be the final judge of that). The broad subject, given our business, will be mobile phones: everything from the technical through to business and culture.

I'm a firm believer that mobile phones will become the world's most important computing devices during the next five years. The influence of mobile phone software will be felt in areas as diverse as entertainment and the enterprise (both users, and in the data center). There's a revolution going on...

So welcome! Comments are enabled on this blog, so please feel free to jump in and join the discussion.