BABBLING ABOUT OUR MOBILE FUTURE
from TheFeature.com
"An alliance of no substance. We at Microsoft were left scratching our heads, asking ourselves, 'Is that it?'"
Juha Christensen, vice-president of Microsoft's mobility group, on Nokia's Series 60 software platform announcement.
"My strong suspicion is that in the near term more people will lose data on their PDAs by running over them in their driveways than they will by viruses. That's not to say the virus threat won't increase, but right now it doesn't seem too damaging."
Frank Prince, senior analyst, Forrester Research
"The growth of wireless connectivity is faster even than the growth of the Internet."
Alex Kanakaris, chief executive, Kanakaris Wireless
"We think, based on what we see now in Europe and Asia, that music, as well as gaming, are going to be two of the hottest things that are going to be available on wireless devices when 3G technology gets rolled out."
Ken Woo, AT&T Wireless director of corporate communications
"It's a zero market for us. If there was demand, our customers would have told us."
Bill Bass, Lands' End's senior vice president of electronic commerce, on why the apparel retailer is not currently pursuing mobile commerce.
"Future mobile telephones will have touch-sensitive screens which are the size of the entire phone, doing away with the need for a keypad."
Peter Cochrane, co-founder, Concept Laboratories
"Touch-tone keypads will go the way of the rotary dial, and people will use the power of voice to place calls, access information and much more on the emerging Voice Web - all thanks to speech recognition."
Ron Kroen, president and CEO of Nuance
"I don't think EDGE will see the light of day."
Dr. Irwin Jacobs, Qualcomm's chairman and CEO
"Cellphones in the United States and Europe are still like 13-inch black-and-white TV sets. People see these color displays and are stunned."
NTT DoCoMo's Kiyoyuki Tsujimura referring to Japan's i-mode phone
"We tend to overestimate the short-term impact (of technology) and underestimate the long-term impact. I think the (3G) revolution will be beyond science fiction."
Dr. Brian Subirana, associate professor at the IESE business school in Barcelona
"Customers have e-mail and the Internet on their desktops. We don't need that. Mobility is what we need."
Verizon Wireless president and CEO Dennis Strigl
"Our position remains the same, scientific evidence does not demonstrate any adverse health effects with the usage of cell phones."
Sharon Snider, spokeswoman for the FDA
"It's not spam! The customers say what they are interested in, and ask for information about those things."
AirFlash chief executive Rama Aysola on location-based services
"Any technology, no matter how bad it is, will have a few cases where people are so desperate they'll use it anyway. That's the stage we're at in terms of mobile Internet on WAP phones."
Dr. Jakob Nielsen, usability expert
"WAP won't fail. There will be WAP II. It will be like the introduction of other technologies like GSM [Global System for Mobile communications] - painful at the beginning"
Joao da Silva, head of the European Commission's unit dealing with mobile and satellite communications
"Forget games consoles, the new object of desire for today's children is a mobile phone."
Tony Lees, a spokesman for NOP Research Group
"The current software platform war of Microsoft and Symbian may be irrelevant. Both platforms may fail to achieve widespread market adoption."
Herschel Shosteck Associate's findings from their study, "Wireless Internet Devices: From phones to the future"
"Is your car your one safe haven from the Internet? Enjoy it while it lasts."
John Frederick Moore, technology writer