Google CEO Eric Schmidt says Mountain View is preparing to spearhead a mobile revolution that will help redefine the role of the smartphone.
According to Schmidt, a handset will soon be capable of delivering streaming personalized information about “where you are [and] what you could do there” in real-time and at scale.
However, the CEO acknowledged that Google first needed to do some “serious spadework,” such as developing advanced LTE networks to carry massive and inevitable data loads.
“These will be 8-to-10- megabit networks, roughly 10 times what we have today, which will usher in new and creative applications, mostly entertainment and social, for these phone platforms,” Schmidt wrote in a recent Harvard Business Review article.
Schmidt also emphasized that Google was interested in promoting the use of mobile devices as serious and secure financial tools.
“Phones, as we know, are used as banks in many poorer parts of the world – and modern technology means that their use as financial tools can [certainly] go much further than that.”
Finally, Schmidt noted that Google wanted to increase the availability of inexpensive smartphones in the poorest parts of the world.
“We envision literally a billion people getting inexpensive, browser-based touchscreen phones over the next few years,” he explained.
“Can you imagine how this will change their awareness of local and global information and their notion of education? And that will be just the start.”
