At Andrew Seybold's Wireless University, co-located with the CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment conference in San Francisco, there was much debate about Mobile Internet Devices, and Seybold himself said none of the MIDs on the market now are an IPK (iPhone Killer).
He pointed to the iPhone 3G and RIM's Blackberry device as MIDs that were ecosystems, but said devices like the Sprint-Samsung Instinct are merely standalone phones, and that was the difference in their ability to reach consumers and tap into the evolving market trends.
MIDs are being hawked by two major industry players right now: Intel and Qualcomm. Intel envisions a device that will run on its Centrino Atom processor, have built in Wi-Fi and WiMax and become ubiquitous along the lines of the iPhone. Qualcomm projects its device having a 1-GHz processor and that wireless operators will have their own MIDs.
In the end though, Seybold said, what will change the market penetration landscape in the United States will be wireless appliances. He predicted that they would contribute to a 300 percent wireless penetration in 10 years. He also said everything consumers do on their devices will have wireless and location-specific applications embedded in them, with phones becoming command and control devices. There will be a dichotomy that will emerge between computers that are wireless enabled and wireless devices that have the power of a computer.
Click here for photos from the Andrew Seybold Wirless University...