Special Report on Personal Technology - The Economist

S P E C I A L R E P O R T

P E R S O N A L T E C H N O L O G YOctober 8th 2011

Beyond the PC

P E R S O N A L T E C H N O L O G Y

Personaltechnology.indd 1 26/09/2011 15:09

The Economist October 8th 2011 1

SPECIAL REPORTPERSONAL TECHNOLOG Y

1

IF YOU HAVE a phone, these days even space is within reach. Last yearLuke Geissbühler and his son, who live in Brooklyn, popped a highde�nition video camera and an Apple iPhone into a sturdy protective boxwith a hole for the camera’s lens. They attached the box to a weather balloon, which they released about 50 miles (80km) outside New York City,after getting the approval of the authorities. The balloon soared into thestratosphere and eventually burst. A parachute brought it to the ground.By tracking the iPhone’s inbuilt global positioning system, the Geissbühlers were able to retrieve the box and the video of their �mission�, which

shows the curvature of the planet clearly. The resultscan be seen at www.brooklynspaceprogram.org.

The iPhone and other smartphones are provingextremely useful on Earth too. These devices, whichlet people download and install applications, or�apps�, from online stores run by phonemakers, telecoms companies and others, are starting to displaceordinary mobile phones in many countries. Ofcom,Britain’s telecoms regulator, recently reported thatmore than one in four adults there uses a smartphone. Nielsen, a marketresearch �rm, reckons thedevices make up the majority of mobilephone purchases in America. Emerging markets are embracingthem as well: in Indonesia, BlackBerry handsetsmade by Canada’s Research in Motion (RIM) havebecome a status symbol among the country’s fastgrowing middle class.

Sales of tablet computers, though still small, arealso growing rapidly. Since Apple’s iPad arrived lastyear, a host of rivals have appeared, such as RIM’sPlaybook, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab and Sony’s Tablet.All eyes are now on Amazon’s Kindle Fire. With

smartphones, which seem to be surgically attached to the hand of everyteenager and many an adult, tablets have opened up a new dimension tomobile computing that is seducing consumers. Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, believes that in 2011 combined shipments of smartphones and tablets will overtake those of personal computers (PCs).

The revolution is mobile

This marks a turningpoint in the world of personal technology. Foraround 30 years PCs in various forms have been people’s main computing devices. Indeed, they were the �rst machines truly to democratisecomputing power, boosting personal productivity and giving people access, via the internet, to a host of services from their homes and o�ces.Now the rise of smartphones and tablet computers threatens to erode thePC’s dominance, prompting talk that a �postPC� era is �nally dawning.

PCs are not about to disappear. Forecasters expect 350m360m ofthem to be sold this year and the market is likely to keep growing, if slowly. With their keyboards, big screens and connectivity to the web, PCs arestill ideal for many tasks, including the writing of this article. And theycontinue to evolve, cheap, light �ultrabooks� being the latest in a long lineof innovations. Even so, the Wintel era�dominated by PCs using Microsoft’s Windows operating system and Intel’s microchips�is drawing to aclose. The recent news that HP, the world’s largest computermaker, isthinking of spinning o� its PC business to focus on fastergrowing areasis a sign of just how much has changed.

Beyond the PC

Mobile digital gadgets are overshadowing the personal computer,

says Martin Giles. Their impact will be farreaching

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

C O N T E N T S

In addition to those quoted in this

special report, the author is

particularly grateful to Vala Afshar,

Ron Deibert, Rob Faris, Jeanne

Harris, Dan Hayes, Carl Howe, Ralf

Jahns, Steve Koenig, Brendon Lynch,

Michael Morgan, Michael Nelson,

Alex Pentland, Markus Pohl, Rob

Rogers, Sarah Rotman Epps, Ted

Schadler, Ken Singer and Jillian York

A list of sources is at

Economist.com/specialreports

An audio interview with

the author is at

Economist.com/audiovideo/specialreports

3 ConsumerisationThe power of many

5 Apps on tapThe beauty of bitesizedsoftware

6 Personal technology atworkIT’s Arab spring

8 Adapting personal IT forbusinessThe consumerindustrialcomplex

9 Droid warsSmartphones are invadingbattle�elds

11 Ubiquitous computingUp close

13 Technology and societyHere comes anyware

2 The Economist October 8th 2011

PERSONAL TECHNOLOG Y

SPECIAL REPORT

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A new tech landscape is taking shape that o�ers consumersaccess to computing almost anywhere and on many di�erentkinds of device. Smartphones are at the forefront of this change.The Yankee Group, a research �rm, thinks that sales of thesephones will overtake those of ordinary �feature� phones in manymore countries in the next few years. But other kinds of machine,from Microsoft’s Xbox 360 gaming console, which allows gamersto contact friends while they play, to webenabled television sets,are also helping people stay connected.

In part, this emerging array of devices re�ects changes insociety. As people come to rely more heavily on the web for everything from shopping to social networking, they need access tocomputing power in many more places. And as the line betweentheir personal and their work lives has blurred, so demand hasgrown for devices that can be used seamlessly in both.

The consumer is king

The rise of tablets and smartphones also re�ects a big shift inthe world of technology itself. For years many of the most excitingadvances in personal computing have come from the armedforces, large research centres or big businesses that focused mainly on corporate customers. Sometimes these breakthroughs foundtheir way to consumers after being modi�ed for mass consumption. The internet, for instance, was inspired by technology �rst developed by America’s defence establishment.

Over the past ten years or so, however, the consumer markethas become a hotbed of innovation in its own right. �The polarityhas reversed in the technology industry,� claims Marc Andreessen, a prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist whose �rm, An

dreessen Horowitz, has invested in several consumer companies,including Facebook and Twitter. Now, he says, many exciting developments in information technology (IT) are appearing in thehands of consumers �rst and only then making their way intoother arenas�a trend that tech types refer to as the �consumerisation� of IT.

The transformation may not be quite as dramatic as Mr Andreessen’s remark implies. Armies, universities and other institutions still spend vast sums on research, the fruit of which will continue to nourish personal technology. Moreover, this is not the �rsttime that individuals have taken the lead in using new gadgets: the�rst PCs were often sneaked into �rms by a few geeky employees.

Nevertheless there are good reasons for thinking that the latest round of consumerisation is going to have a far bigger impactthan its predecessors. One is that rising incomes have created avast, global audience of early adopters for gadgets. Around 8m units of the Kinect, a Microsoft device that attaches to the Xbox andlets people control onscreen action with their body movements,were sold within 60 days of its launch in November 2010. No consumerelectronics device has ever sold so fast, according to Guinness World Records. �These people will absorb new technologyon a scale that is simply quite stunning,� says Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s head of research and strategy.

The cost of many gadgets is falling fast, giving another �llipto consumption. Smartphones priced at around $100�after a subsidy from telecoms companies, which make money on associateddata plans�are starting to appear in America. The cheapest Kindle, an ereader from Amazon, sells for $79, against $399 for the�rst version launched in 2007. The cost of digital storage has also

Sources: Cisco; Gartner; Informa Telecoms & Media; KPCB; Morgan Stanley; UN; Yankee Group; The Economist *Forecast

MobilebroadbandconnectionsPer 100people, 2010

91-100

41-50

0-10

Russia143.0

Brazil194.9

China1,341.3

France62.8

Germany82.3

India1,224.6

Japan126.5

South Korea48.2

Britain62.0

United States310.4 Population

m, 2010

150

100

50

0

400

300

200

0

100

Mobile phones in usem, 2003-15 Feature phones Smartphones

2011

Forecast

in1993 100m

PCs

PCs1bn

by2020* Mobile

connecteddevices

10bn

in2008

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

2005 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13

Smartphones

Tablets

Desktop PCs

Laptop PCs

F O R E C A S T

Device shipmentsUnits, m

Growth ofthe gadget

Devices in use:



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fallen dramatically. A gigabyte (GB) of storage, which is roughlyenough to hold a two-hour �lm after compression, cost around$200,000 in 1980; today a disk drive holding a terabyte, or1,024GB, costs around $100.

The growth of the internet and the rapid spread of fastbroadband connectivity have also transformed the landscape.So has the rise of companies such as Apple, Google and Amazon,whose main aim is to delight individuals rather than businessesor governments. Apple, in particular, has been to the fore in thedemocratisation of IT, creating a host of impressive devices suchas the iPhone and the iPad. Much of the credit for its success goesto Steve Jobs, who stood down in August as its chief executive.

Techtonic shifts

This special report will examine in more detail the forcesunderlying the reversal in polarity to which Mr Andreessen re-fers and how they are a�ecting individuals, businesses and gov-ernments. The combination of new devices with pervasive con-nectivity and plentiful online content is raising citizens’expectations of what personal technology can achieve. And it isleading them to bring their own devices into the workplace,where some of the technology they are expected to use nowseems antediluvian by comparison. This trend is challengingcompanies to rethink their IT departments’ habit of treating em-ployees as digital serfs who must do as they are told.

The burgeoning global market for smart consumer technol-ogy is also inspiring an outpouring of entrepreneurial energythat will create many more remarkable products. And it is en-couraging organisations of all kinds to adapt innovations fromthe consumer world for their own ends. Companies are settingup online app stores for their employees; hospitals are handingout specially modi�ed smartphones to nurses; soldiers are try-ing out tablet computers to control drones and experimentingwith �battle�eld apps�. Many more such opportunities are likelyto emerge as the technological and economic forces behind thispopular computing revolution gather steam. 7

ANYONE WANTING TO get a better idea of the scale of thechanges taking place in the world of consumer electronics

should take a look at Foxconn’s giant factory complex in Shen-zhen, in southern China. Known as Foxconn City, it covers an en-tire square mile and is crammed with manufacturing operationsand company-managed housing, medical facilities and educa-tional centres. About 400,000 people work there, roughly asmany as live in Oakland, California.

Like several other Taiwanese �rms that operate factories athome and in China, Foxconn churns out electronic devices onbehalf of a number of Western companies. By tapping intocheap Asian labour, Apple, Samsung and other consumer-elec-tronics giants have been able to drive down the prices of theirphones and other gadgets, broadening their appeal to consum-ers. A handful of insurgent Asian �rms, including China’s Hua-wei and Taiwan’s HTC, which make devices that run on Google’sAndroid mobile operating system, are using their cost advantage

Consumerisation

The power of many

The shift from personal to personalised computing

to build their own global brands.A globalised supply chain is not the only thing helping con-

sumer-electronics companies to cut costs. They are also bene�t-ing from economies of scale as the incomes of more and morepeople in more and more countries rise to the point at which gad-gets are a�ordable. Erik Brynjolfsson of the MIT Sloan School ofManagement points out that because of this, manufacturers ofconsumer electronics are now moving down production learn-ing curves faster than more specialised tech �rms.

HTC is a case in point. The company shipped over 22mphones in the �rst half of this year, more than twice as many asin the �rst half of 2010. As it has grown, it has been constantlytweaking the integration between product development andmanufacturing. Matthew Costello, the �rm’s chief operating o�-cer, says that it now takes six to 12 months for the Taiwanese com-pany to get a product from the conceptual stage to a consumer’shand, compared with 12 to 18 months only two years ago.

Power surge

The ability to amortise spending over a fast-growing audi-ence is also encouraging tech �rms to pour more money into con-sumer-focused research and development (R&D). Asked what isdriving consumerisation, Jen-Hsun Huang, the boss of NVIDIA,an American �rm that makes graphic chips for everything fromgaming consoles to smartphones and supercomputers, whizzesthrough a quick calculation. There are about 200m PCs sold ev-ery year that contain the kind of chips that NVIDIA produces, hesays. Assuming an average sales price of $20 per chip, that makesa potential market today of $4 billion for the �rm’s products.Sales of the types of PC that NVIDIA targets are likely to grow, sothis number could increase.

However, Mr Huang expects the market for smartphones togrow far faster, with around 2 billion ultimately being sold eachyear. Given that the average sales price of NVIDIA’s chips forthese devices is $20 too, the potential market is $40 billion, tentimes as big as that in PCs. Other forecasters also expect demandfor smartphones to soar. Gartner, a research �rm, estimates that 1billion will be sold in 2015, up from 468m this year. �R&D is shift-ing to consumer-focused markets simply because we have morehope that it will be monetised there,� explains Mr Huang.

These economic trends are being reinforced by several tech-nological ones. Arguably the most important has been the abili-ty of microchip-makers to squeeze ever more computing poweronto their products, as Moore’s law (which holds that the num-ber of transistors on a single chip doubles roughly every twoyears) has continued to operate. James Bruce of ARM, a Britishcompany that designs chips for the iPhone and other portabledevices, reckons today’s versions are 40 times more powerfulthan those around in 2000.

One of the most important leaps has been the introductionof �multi-core� processors, tiny chips with two or more proces-sors, or �cores�, on them. Often, smartphones are used only forsimple stu� such as calls and e-mail, which do not require all oftheir computing potential. By using multi-core chips and smartsoftware, phonemakers can shut down one or more of the pro-cessors, reducing the drain on phones’ batteries. �We have be-come experts at the art of doing nothing,� jokes Mr Bruce.

Other advances have also contributed to the personal-com-puting revolution. Lithium-ion polymer batteries, which can beeasily moulded to �t di�erent shapes, have made possible ultra-slim devices. Developments in ��ash� memory technology havemade it possible to store more data in devices. Advances inscreen know-how have begotten super-sharp displays. Photosand videos can be shot and shared on the move. Some phoneseven allow video calls.

Pioneers such as Amazon have built cloud-based �ecosys-tems� that make content such as its electronic books widelyavailable. Even though the �rm has its own e-reader, the Kindle,and has hatched a tablet computer too, it has also created appsand other software that let people get at their digital stu� on all

sorts of devices, including PCs. Othercompanies are developing their own eco-systems in a bid to make people’s mobile-computing experience even more seam-less. Google’s recent $12.5 billion acquisi-tion of Motorola Mobility, which makessmartphones, tablets and other gadgets,

will enable it to produce a new crop of devices to show o� itscloud services, such as Gmail and Google Docs, to best e�ect.And Apple is stepping up its integration e�orts, rolling out an�iCloud� in which people can store up to 5GB of content for noth-ing, and more if they pay.

Heads in the cloud

The rise of the cloud has also created an explosion of otherconsumer-focused web services. These include the big socialnetworks such as Facebook, which has over 800m users, and ahost of smaller �rms such as Foursquare, which was created spe-ci�cally to let people tell their pals where they are. This combina-tion of social networking, location-signalling and mobile com-puting�nicknamed �SoLoMo� by John Doerr, a prominentventure capitalist�has given birth to out�ts such as Badoo, a sitefor people wanting to chat, �irt and date. Mobile computing isalso encouraging people to use web services more often thanthey would on a PC. Facebook reports that people who visit itsnetwork via mobile devices are twice as active on it as those who

Technologically impressive as all this is, the biggest changethat the new devices have wrought is to transform many peo-ple’s experience of computing. The PC may have been personal;a smartphone or tablet, held in your hand rather than perchedon your desk, is almost intimate, and you can take it almost any-where. This shift has been driven by Apple, which likes to boastthat most of its revenue now comes from �post-PC� devices suchas iPods and iPhones rather than from its Macintosh computers.This is partly marketing talk: crack open an iPhone and you will�nd many of the paraphernalia�including a motherboard andmicrochips�that make up the guts of a PC too.

The Gucci of gadgets

Yet Apple has indeed ushered in a new era in which perso-nal technology is �nally living up to its name. That is because thetechnology is starting to adapt to the people who use it ratherthan forcing them to adapt to it. The most obvious manifesta-tions of this are the touch-screens and intuitive operating sys-tems on many tablets and smartphones that have allowed eventoddlers to take to them with gusto. It is also re�ected in the waythat phones can now be tweaked to re�ect people’s increasinglyconnected lives by, say, bringing up a friend’s latest Facebookposts when he calls. �The PC is personal but nowhere near ascustomisable as the smartphone,� says Tim Bajarin of CreativeStrategies, a consultancy.

The marketing of this new generation of mobile deviceshas also reinforced the notion of technology as something per-sonal. Again, Apple has led the way, encasing the mass of elec-tronics that make up iPhones and iPads in elegant cases andchurning out its iPods in a range of di�erent colours. �Consumertechnology is becoming fashion,� says Paul Sa�o, a veteran Sili-con Valley tech-watcher who works for Discern Analytics. �AndApple is now the world’s biggest fashion company.�

Still, no matter how good a gadget looks, utility counts. Thisis where smartphones excel. Many now contain sensors such asaccelerometers (which detect whether a gadget is being held ver-tically or horizontally), gyroscopes and compasses. More andmore employ global positioning system (GPS) technology,which let the Geissbühlers �nd their iPhone when it returned

from its space mission. Soon this sensor technology will becomewidespread too: ABI Research forecasts that by 2013 85% ofsmartphones will be shipped with GPS systems and around halfwill contain accelerometers and gyroscopes.

Thanks to these sensors and the apps that tap data fromthem (see box on the next page), smartphones are being used forall sorts of things, such as navigation and video-recording, thatused to require dedicated devices. Some in the industry call thesmartphone the Swiss Army knife of consumer electronics.HTC’s Mr Costello says it is more like a black hole �because it isswallowing so many other gadgets�.

Another big driver of mobile-device usage�and thus ofconsumerisation�has been the rise of cloud computing. Formuch of the personal-computing era, the content that peopleneeded for work or entertainment had to be stored on PCs’ harddisks, or on external hard drives and USB keys. But now data andcontent often reside in the �cloud�: large server farms, run byAmazon, Google and others, where huge amounts of data arestored for retrieval from almost anywhere in the world.

The PC may have been personal; a smartphone or tablet,held in your hand rather than perched on your desk, isalmost intimate, and you can take it almost anywhere



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ASKED WHAT MAKES mobile apps so special,Bart Decrem, a co-founder of Tapulous,gives a reply that could have come straightout of the mouth of Steve Jobs. �Apps arenuggets of magic,� he says. �They veryelegantly address the strengths and weak-nesses of the mobile internet.� Mr Decremknows the app economy well. After buildinga number of successful gaming apps atTapulous, including �Tap Tap Revenge�,which involves tapping on coloured balls asthey move down a phone’s screen, he soldhis company last year to Disney, where he isnow an executive.

Hordes of other developers have piledinto the app business, creating hundreds ofthousands of o�erings for online stores runby Apple and Google, by telecoms �rms suchas South Korea’s SK Telecom, and by in-dependent app stores such as GetJar. Theappetite for apps appears insatiable:Gartner, a research �rm, estimates thatalmost 18 billion have been downloadedsince the �rst app store was opened byApple in 2008. By 2013, it thinks, the num-ber will have risen to 49 billion. Many aregames such as �Tap Tap Revenge� and�Angry Birds�, in which a bunch of enrageddigital fowl wage war against evil pigs thathave pinched their eggs. But there are also

plenty with a more serious purpose, such asthe Federal Bureau of Investigation’s ChildID iPhone app, which lets parents storeinformation about their kids and send it tothe authorities if a child goes missing.

In many ways, apps are representativeof the changes taking place in personaltechnology. Small, downloadable chunks ofsoftware, they give people access to infor-mation in a neatly packaged format andmost have one or more of the followingattributes: simplicity, cheapness and in-stant grati�cation.

They have caught on partly becausemany websites do not look good whenviewed on phones’ tiny screens. Apps do amuch better job of making the best of thespace available. Using them is intuitive, byand large. Many are free; many others costno more than a fancy cup of co�ee. Some ofthe most creative apps make the most ofphones’ sensors. Gaming ones use acceler-ometers and gyroscopes to track users’motions, while mobile-navigation apps relyon inbuilt GPS systems.

Another reason why apps have provedpopular is that, unlike websites, they do notneed a constant connection to the internet.Instead, they are stored in mobile gadgets’silicon memories and refreshed when a new

connection is available. This also explainswhy they launch so much faster than soft-ware on PCs. �Apps mean that people are nolonger going to be satis�ed waiting forspinning hard disks on PCs to deliver whatthey want,� says Tim Bajarin of CreativeStrategies, a consultancy.

There has been speculation that appsmay fade when new websites designed towork better on mobile devices appear. Butthat is unlikely to happen while mobile-internet connectivity remains patchy. Fansalso point out that apps are easy to create.

Most, however, are destined forobscurity. Today there are more than425,000 apps in Apple’s online store andmore than 250,000 in Google’s AndroidMarket. Yet in a recent survey of Android-phone users in America, Nielsen, anotherresearch �rm, discovered that the ten mostpopular apps accounted for 43% of usageand the top 50 for a whopping 61%. Admit-tedly, these statistics may be in�uenced bythe pre-loading of apps for services such asFacebook and Google Maps onto manyphones. But the results are still telling. Partof the problem is that there is still no reli-able search engine for discovering out-standing apps. No doubt there will soon bean app for that too.

Apps on tap

The beauty of bite-sized software

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Music

NewsNo. of app downloads Worldwide, bn

2008

0.5 2.58.2

09 10 11* 12* 13*

49.2

31.2

17.7

STORE NO. OF APPSApple App Store 414,852Android Market 237,199GetJar 160,296MobiHand 158,301PocketGear 91,144Mobango 82,936Handango 44,685SK Telecom T Store 37,629BlackBerry App World 36,781Handster 31,042

Biggest app storesQ2 2011

Sources: Android Market; AP; Apple; Gartner; Nielsen; research2guidance *Forecast †US ‡Apple: iPhone only; Android: all devices

Top free apps‡

September 27th 2011

1. Hair Plucker2. Temple Run3. Draw ‘n’ Go: Awesomeness!4. Office Zombie5. Google+

Most popular categories% of users†, Q2 2011

Most popular:

1. Facebook2. Google Maps3. Talking Tom Cat 24. YouTube5. MP3 Music Download Pro

64

60

56

51

44

39

Games

Weather

Social networks

Maps/search

Music

News



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tap into it via other means.Other small software companies are also placing powerful

tech tools in people’s hands. Dropbox lets users upload photos,documents and other content via a simple interface and then re-trieve them from many di�erent devices. SlideShare allows peo-ple to share presentations and other stu� via the cloud. Many ofthese companies o�er a free basic service: Dropbox lets usersstore up to 2GB of data for nothing, then charges for more.

Amazingly capable mobile devices and oodles of cloud-based content are two of the three pillars on which the personal-ised computing revolution is being built. But it is the third pillar�

the proliferation of broadband connections�that has turbo-charged it. In many rich countries �xed-line broadband connec-tions are now commonplace, often with a Wi-Fi link at the end ofthem to allow people to use their devices wherever they are inhomes or o�ces. And a variety of wireless technologies includ-ing �third-generation�, or 3G, networks, Wi-Fi and Bluetoothhave made it possible for people to stay connected to the internetalmost everywhere.

Skype, which claims to have about 170m monthly active us-ers, is one of the services that has �ourished as all sorts of de-vices have become more powerful and connected. �It’s amazing

how many things you can now use Skype on,� says Tony Bates,the �rm’s boss, who points out that many of the innovative usesof the online phone and video-calling service have been in-spired by consumers. For instance, when teachers began usingSkype to swap advice on classes, the �rm added features thatmade it easier for them to collaborate using its technology.

Like many other technology executives, Mr Bates is con-vinced that consumerisation is an unstoppable force and that ithas raised people’s expectations hugely. �It used to be that thebest IT experiences people had were in the o�ce,� he says. �Nowthat technology has been democratised, they have become usedto doing new and exciting things themselves.� For their employ-ers, this is creating both opportunities and headaches. 7



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WILLEM EELMAN, the chief information o�cer (CIO) ofUnilever, an Anglo-Dutch consumer-goods giant, recounts

the reaction of young employees when they �rst come across thecomplicated and often confusing ways in which many big cor-porate IT systems still present information to sta�. �They take alook at a business-application screen and they scream in horror,�he says. The youngsters are even more horri�ed when presentedwith tomes of instructions through which they must plough be-fore getting down to work.

Like many other companies, Unilever is recruiting from ageneration whose expectations of technology have been pro-foundly shaped by Facebook, mobile apps and other innova-tions. But it isn’t just �digital natives� who are shocked by thestate of some of the technology in their workplaces. The rapidspread of tablets and smartphones, and the magnetic attractionof social networks and other online tools such as Twitter, meanthat people of all ages have grown accustomed to having power-ful yet easy-to-use technologies at their �ngertips. Many of themwant the same stu� at work too.

Their demands are also being fuelled by changes in society.Among these is the increasing mobility of the workforce, wheth-er commuting or visiting clients, which has made smartphonesand tablets especially popular with corporate road-warriors.There has also been a gradual blurring of the lines between per-sonal and business lives, which means that people rely on tech-nology much more to allow them to work or play anywhere atany time.

The e�ects of these changes are being widely felt. A surveyof 3,000 workers in nine countries carried out by IDC, a research�rm, for Unisys, an IT company, and published in July found thattheir use of personal devices to access business information hadgrown sharply, partly because of the arrival of tablets (see chart 1on the next page). The study also noted that ITdepartments oftengreatly underestimate how much employees are using their owntechnology, including social networks and other web services,for work. And it accused internal tech teams of frequently usingsecurity concerns as a ��gleaf� to justify keeping tight control ofdecisions about which devices workers may and may not use.

How far �rms are a�ected by all this will largely depend onthe nature of their business. Those with a highly mobile work-

force are already seeing swift changes. Accenture, a consulting�rm whose sta� often work at clients’ o�ces, is a case in point.Frank Modruson, the CIO of the company, which has 223,000employees, says that less than two years ago 30,000 smart-phones and other mobile devices were connected to its network,most of them bought by the �rm. Today there are 85,000, lessthan a third of which were provided by the company.

Other companies are seeing a more gradual in�ux of em-ployee-owned gadgets. At Unilever, Mr Eelman says that of the90,000 employees who use a computer for their jobs (out of a to-tal of 160,000 sta�) about 5,000 have so far brought in a mobilegadget of their own. But he expects that number to grow as thecompany rolls out a new IT infrastructure that will allow peopleto work more easily from di�erent places.

War of the IT worlds

The arrival en masse of personal technology in the work-place is causing waves. �Historically many IT departments havetreated people as tech automatons who should do what they aretold,� says Bob Tinker, the boss of MobileIron, which helps �rmsmanage mobile devices. For years that has involved restrictingpeople’s choice of mobile gadgets to a few devices such as theBlackBerry smartphones made by Canada’s RIM.

One rationale for this was that strict standardisation savedmoney. By limiting choice to a few gadgets, companies could buythem in bulk and streamline their maintenance in much thesame way that, say, budget airlines reap big savings by buyingjust one or two types of aeroplane. At the same time, standardi-sation made it easier to ensure security. A big reason why Black-Berrys have proved so popular with companies has been thatRIM also provides software that lets IT departments maintain a�rm grip on the way the devices are used.

Now, however, IT teams are facing a challenge to their au-thority. Much of what workers are demanding, including the

Personal technology at work

IT’s Arab spring

People are demanding to use their own gadgets in

their jobs. Trying to thwart them is futile



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1

right to use their own smartphones and tablets for work, to mixbusiness and personal data on them, and to personalise themwith their own apps, is anathema to IT departments used to run-ning digital dictatorships. Often it is senior executives who insiston being allowed to use their own technology for work, whichmakes it hard for IT folk to say no. �This really is the end of thenanny state of IT,� says Doug Neal of CSC, a consultancy.

CIOs who try to ban the use of personal technology atwork risk a proliferation of �shadow IT�, which arises when em-ployees surreptitiously use their own devices and software to getthings done. This is not new, as the example of the people whosneaked the �rst PCs into o�ces shows. What is di�erent is thesheer scale of the consumerisation movement this time. Ratherthan a few geeky rebels, there are now entire armies of employ-ees equipped with smart mobile devices. Left undetected, theirdo-it-yourself e�orts could cause sensitive corporate data to leakand open digital doors to hackers.

There is some debate about just how big a threat this is. Ear-lier this year Verizon, an American telecoms �rm, published a re-port that reviewed numerous corporate data breaches that hadoccurred in 2010. It concluded that most of these were due to di-rect attacks on corporate servers, not to mobile devices beingcompromised. Moreover, many smartphones and tablets nowinclude features such as the ability to erase, or �wipe�, the con-tent on them remotely and to track their location using their in-built GPS systems. The same cannot be said of most PCs. Andsome operating systems such as later versions of Apple’s iOS in-clude ready-made encryption capabilities that protect data ondevices. This helps explain why so many companies are embrac-ing iPads. Apple has said that most members of the Fortune 100list of America’s largest �rms are either buying the gadgets orrunning trials with them.

Nevertheless there are grounds for concern. The Verizon re-port predicts that threats to mobile devices will grow as more are

sold. And another study published in August by McAfee, an IT-security �rm, found there had been a steady increase in mobile�malware��software such as viruses and �Trojans� designed todisrupt or steal data (see chart 2 on the next page). Google’s An-droid system is an especially popular target. One piece of mal-ware disguised as an Android calendar app sent SMS messagesto a premium-rate number without users’ knowledge. Another,masquerading as an update for �Angry Birds�, a mobile game,deleted browser histories and bookmarks on phones.

Popular web services have also had security hiccups. InJune a software update at Dropbox caused a temporary securitybreach that allowed unauthorised access to data held by the on-line-storage service for about four hours. According to the com-pany’s blog, fewer than 100 accounts were compromised, but theepisode nevertheless shocked those who had assumed that theservice was perfectly secure. The �rm has since taken steps toprevent a recurrence.

Lock up your devices

Perhaps the biggest risk of all, though, is employees them-selves. Numerous studies have shown that although people locktheir cars and their homes, many do not secure their mobile de-vices. A report in March by the Ponemon Institute, a researchgroup, for AVG, a security �rm, found that less than half of the734 Americans surveyed had set up passwords on their smart-phones, even though most had used them for work. Other stud-ies have found that when people do protect their phones, theyoften choose codes that can be cracked easily, such as �pass-word� or �12345�, rather than more secure combinations of let-ters, numbers and other symbols.

Many CIOs recognise that trying to stamp out the use ofpersonal gadgets at work is not only futile but also risky. �I’d rath-er know about a device and put reasonable security on it thanstick my head in the sand and pretend it’s not there,� says Accen-ture’s Mr Modruson. To manage the risks, companies have beeninstalling systems from �rms, such as MobileIron and Zenprise,whose software lets IT departments manage a wide range of mo-bile devices. These can detect the kinds of gadgets that are gain-ing access to a �rm’s network and wipe data from those that arelost. �Virtual desktops� from companies like VMware and Citrixthat let people use devices but keep data on a remote server be-hind a �rewall are another popular means of limiting risks.

All this costs money. So there is much debate in the IT worldabout whether or not consumerisation leads to savings too. MrModruson says that Accenture’s employees have spent $4.25m

Rather thana few geekyrebels,there arenow entirearmies ofemployeesequippedwith smartmobiledevices

1

Source: IDC survey, May 2010 and 2011

Devices used for access to business applications, %

Bring your toys to the office

2010 2011

Personal PC,smartphone,

tablet40.7

Personal PC,smartphone

30.7Business PC,smartphone

69.3

Business PC,smartphone,

tablet59.3



SPECIAL REPORT

2

1

WHEN SHE STARTS her day at Sarasota Memorial Hospitalin Florida, Danielle Reed picks up a smartphone. It is part of

a system provided by Voalté, a start-up created to modify smart-phones for doctors and nurses. The phone allows Ms Reed tocommunicate quickly and easily with her fellow nurses eitherby calling them or by sending text messages, a number of whichare preprogrammed. She can also open specialised apps: one al-lows her to look up di�erent medicines and their side-e�ects; an-other helps her identify pills brought in by patients.

Ms Reed says that the smartphone has other bene�ts too.She no longer has to carry di�erent devices for making phonecalls and receiving alerts, and she can send group text messages,which makes it easier to communicate with all of her colleagueson a ward. The 300 or so phones provided by Voalté (whosename comprises the �rst two letters of �voice�, �alarm� and�text�) have also helped to make Sarasota Memorial a quieterplace for both patients and workers. Before introducing them thehospital often relied on a noisy public paging system to sendmessages to nurses and other sta�. This is now used much less.

Keep taking the tablets

Rob Campbell, Voalté’s chief executive, says the companyexpected to encounter plenty of scepticism when pitching its ser-vice to hospitals because the medical profession is used to get-ting purpose-built gadgets for so many things. But it has beenpleasantly surprised by the reception to the consumer technol-ogy. �There’s so much momentum behind these smartphonesthat doctors and board members get it,� he says. They get tabletstoo: Manhattan Research, a health-care research company, pub-lished a survey in May that estimated that 30% of American doc-tors were already using iPads and almost as many again wereplanning to get one within six months.

In spite of this momentum, Voalté has succeeded only be-cause it has worked hard to adapt the technology that consum-ers enjoy to a hospital environment. Among other things, it hasmodi�ed iPhones and BlackBerrys so they can handle calls overhospitals’ Wi-Fi networks, because cellular coverage can be poorinside some wards. It has also installed robust security softwareon the devices and ensured that they can gain access only to ahospital’s network. And it has developed a gadget that rechargesup to 40 phones at once while connecting them to Voalté’s serv-ers, which update their software. Ms Reed says a single charge isperfectly adequate to keep the phone running for her shift,which can last up to 12 hours.

Like Voalté, plenty of other organisations (including thearmed forces of several countries: see box on the next page) arekeen to take advantage of the billions of dollars that the consum-er-electronics industry spends on R&D each year. Apple and oth-er companies that focus on the global consumer market typicallyshow little interest in other areas because that market is so big. Byadapting their innovations for di�erent uses, entrepreneurialcompanies are carving out new niches of their own. Many oftheir products and services promise to make the organisationsthat adopt them more e�cient and agile.

Social networks are a case in point. Facebook, in particular,

Adapting personal IT for business

The consumer-industrial complexAll sorts of organisations are borrowing ideas from

consumer technology

of their own money on tablet computers that they use for work.But Cesare Garlati of Trend Micro, an IT-security company, giveswarning that companies also need to take into account the costof managing many di�erent kinds of devices running on varioustelecoms networks. �It’s a nightmare of complexity,� he says.

Yet even if IT perestroika is pricey, the investment may stillbe worth it�and not just because it minimises the risk of a disas-ter caused by shadow IT. For a start, �rms that embrace consum-erisation are more likely to attract technologically minded work-ers at a time when IT is becoming ever more crucial to corporatesuccess. Those people are also more likely to give their employ-ers early warning of innovations in the personal-technologyworld that could a�ect their business. And they are probably bet-ter at conversing with customers who are themselves adoptingmany of the same technologies.

Such considerations help explain why even companies inheavily regulated industries are letting people bring their owngadgets to work. �Previously we just said no to people using non-standard devices,� says Robert Cockerill of Thames River Capi-tal, a British fund-management company. Now the �rm lets em-ployees use a range of phones and tablets as long as sensitivedata on them are encrypted and activity is logged in order tocomply with regulations.

P�zer, a big pharmaceuticals company, is also embracingconsumerisation cautiously. �We have to �nd a balance between�exibility and protecting the intellectual assets that are the life-blood of the company,� says Je� Keisling, the �rm’s CIO. Thecompany allows workers to use various kinds of devices and op-erating systems, but to get access to its network they must agreeto load an encryption agent on their gadgets and to allow P�zerto wipe part or all of the information on them if necessary.

At the other end of the spectrum, some companies are giv-ing their employees stipends to encourage them to buy theirown devices. One of these is Citrix, which requires sta� to use itsown virtual-desktop product on the gadgets they purchase andto install antivirus software prescribed by the company. The �rmsays that about a �fth of its 6,500 employees have taken advan-tage of the policy.

Mr Eelman of Unilever sees consumerisation as part of abroader shift in what companies expect of their IT departments.Not so long ago, he says, many internal tech teams were focusedon installing gigantic software systems to handle such things asaccounting and human resources. Most of these are now inplace, though they require maintenance. This means IT now hasmore time to be a partner supporting �rms’ business divisions.Enabling workers to use the gadgets they consider best for theirjobs is part of this strategic realignment. Wise companies are notjust embracing the consumerisation of IT. They are also turninginnovations from personal technology to their advantage. 7

2Sneaky geekery

Source: McAfee

Unique pieces of mobile malware, cumulative total

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q42009

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q410

Q1 Q211

0

200

400

600

800

1,000

1,200



2

1

has proved wildly popular for sharingeverything from videos of Lady Gaga tophotos of a drunken night out. But thesenetworks’ public nature makes them un-suitable for exchanging sensitive cor-porate material�and probably those pho-tos too. This has opened the door to �rmssuch as Salesforce.com, Socialtext, Yam-mer and others that have created tailor-made networks for businesses, behindcorporate �rewalls. Like the big publicnetworks, these custom-made ones typi-cally allow employees to see who else isactive, set up project groups and exchangestu� among themselves. Firms that usethem say they have made it easier for sta�to �nd important information and to col-laborate with their fellow workers.

Your colleague is your friend

Bajaj Finance, an Indian consumer-lending �rm that has been using Chatter,Salesforce.com’s social-networking sys-tem, for over a year, says it has led to muchsmoother communication between itssales sta� and underwriters. In the past,explains Rakesh Bhatt, the company’schief information o�cer, the assessmentof which potential customers to take oninvolved lots of bilateral e-mails and in-stant messaging. Loan documents wereexchanged on a separate electronic net-work, adding a layer of complexity. Nowall of this happens on its social network.Mr Bhatt says the network has helped the�rm make speedier and better decisionsabout which risks to underwrite.

Apps are another consumer innova-tion being imported by businesses. Manyorganisations, including The Economist,have developed their own apps to deliveror promote their products via publicstores run by Apple and others. Nowsome companies, including PepsiCo,Standard Chartered, a big bank, andP�zer, are setting up their own internalapp stores too. Many of the apps in themare designed to help mobile workers savetime. P�zer, for example, has created anapp that makes it easy for employees tolocate and contact co-workers travellingon business�a boon in a global �rm withperipatetic executives.

Another popular set of corporateapps supplies data to people on the road.A�ac, a big American insurer, has devel-oped several apps that allow members ofits sales team access to customer data and claims records withouthaving to log in from a desktop computer. Some companies areeven holding competitions among their employees to see whocan come up with the best apps�a practice copied from the con-sumer world, where contests among app developers are com-mon. Researchers at Gartner predict that by 2014 around a quar-ter of business apps will be created by workers who are not partof IT departments.

Other apps will be built by companies. Deloitte, a �rm ofconsultants, has created one called Bamboo to help it with disas-ter-recovery planning. The app allows the �rm to update em-ployees’ emergency plans automatically by pushing new infor-mation to their phones, which are among the few things thatpeople tend to take with them in a sudden evacuation. Deloitte isplanning to roll out the app across all of its o�ces and has alsodeveloped a service based on it that it is selling to its customers.

COMPANIES ARE NOT the only ones adaptingpersonal technology to their own ends.Armies are too. Next month Singapore is dueto issue thousands of tablets to recruits, tohelp them get ready for training sessions andrecord what they learn. Britain has also beenusing tablets to help prepare troops for dutyin places such as Afghanistan.

Smartphones and tablets may soon bedeployed more widely in combat zones aswell. Harris, an American �rm with expertisein video communications, is working on anapp that allows a tablet computer remotelyto control a camera on a drone. And Rayth-eon, a big American defence company, isdeveloping Raytheon Android Tactical Sys-tem (RATS), a platform that allows soldiers tochoose from numerous smartphone apps,including ones that let them receive imagesfrom drones or satellites on their screens.

Armies are keen on consumer tech-nology for several reasons. First, electronics�rms are outgunning them in R&D spendingon things such as touch screens and otherinterfaces. �The industry’s annual invest-ment here is well over 1,000 times greaterthan the military’s,� explains Mark Bighamof Raytheon. With budgets tight, private-sector innovations are even more appealing.

Smartphones can also give a soldiermore real-time data about battle�elds. RATS

o�ers an augmented-reality app, whichoverlays an image from a phone’s camerawith data from other sources. A soldier can�see� digital markers representing othermembers of his unit (tracked via GPS signalsfrom their devices). This could help reduce

incidents of friendly �re, as well as givingsoldiers an advantage over the enemy.

The idea of spotting people’s where-abouts on a screen will be familiar to gam-ers�another reason why armies are interest-ed in consumer gear. As so many youngsoldiers have used smart gadgets already,they do not need much training on them.�From an R&D perspective and a trainingperspective, these devices are a no-brainer,�says Michael Anthony of the US Army’s Com-munications-Electronics Research Devel-opment and Engineering Centre (CERDEC).

There are still hurdles to surmount.Consumer phones are not designed forcombat. They also require constant wirelessconnectivity, as well as long-lasting batter-ies. O�cials at CERDEC say these drawbackscan be overcome. Field tests suggest thatwith some modest additional protection,smartphones are robust enough for use andspecial batteries can prolong time betweencharges. Armies can also tap wireless-net-working gear mounted on drones and bal-loons to keep soldiers connected in the �eld.

Even with modi�cations, the phoneswill still be far cheaper than bespoke devices.And their software can also be updated in a�ash. In one test of RATS, users requested anew feature for an app. Three hours later arevised version was available for download-ing. Armies have to accept that consum-erisation is a�ecting them too. Soldiers arebringing their own phones with them ondeployments, so it would be best if they gottheir apps from stores that have a militaryseal of approval.

Droid wars

Smartphones are invading battle�elds

Firms are also developing apps that let employees unlocksome of the data that are held in head-o�ce enterprise systemsmore easily. MeLLmo, a start-up, has created an app calledRoambi that takes data from big �nancial systems and presentsthem in graphical format on smartphones and tablets. SantiagoBecerra, the �rm’s boss, says Roambi is popular with �nancetypes and other road warriors who need information on themove, but can be used in other settings too. One big manufactur-er has even issued iPads with the app to sta� monitoring its pro-duction lines. Now they no longer have to return to �xed PC

workstations to consult production data�a trip that could takeeight to ten minutes each time in the �rm’s huge factories. Ger-many’s SAP, America’s Oracle and other companies that createbig IT systems are rolling out software to make it easier for �rmsthat work with them to develop their own mobile apps.

Several of Roambi’s developers come from the computer-games industry, where expertise in producing great graphics onsmall screens is plentiful. Avaya, which creates communicationstools for businesses, has also borrowed know-how developedfor games for a product called web.alive, which allows people tohold meetings and conferences in a virtual environment, usingavatars. And numerous �rms, not to mention the armed forces,are using videogame-like technology for training.

Savings in the virtual sky

Cloud computing, which began with consumer-focused e-mail services such as Hotmail, has also caught on in the businessworld. The companies leading the charge here are Amazon andGoogle, which have already developed popular cloud servicesaimed at consumers, such as Kindle e-books and Gmail. Amazonhas built a huge business renting cloud-computing capacity andservices to companies and Google boasts over 4m customers

that use Google Apps, a range of cloud-based software includinge-mail and document-sharing. Used to Google’s free consumerproducts, many workers take to its corporate ones easily.

This and the prospect of cost savings have encouragedmore organisations to embrace cloud-based o�erings. Last yearthe city of Los Angeles, which faces a big budget de�cit, adopteda series of apps designed by Google for governments. KevinCrawford, an IT manager for the city, thinks it will save morethan $1m a year over the next few years simply by not having torun and support its own in-house systems for things such as e-mail. Firms that have ended up with a hotch-potch of di�erentIT systems as a result of mergers have also taken to the cloud.MWV, an acquisitive global-packaging company, switched toGoogle’s e-mail app rather than try to integrate ten di�erent e-mail systems that it inherited from various deals.

Drawing on consumer-inspired technology can produce in-tangible bene�ts too. Employee app developers are more likelythan external ones to have a good idea of what they need to dotheir jobs well and will relish the opportunity to create their ownsoftware. And internal social networks are an aid to co-operationin what management types like to call the �white space� be-tween a company’s various divisions, by making it easier to �ndand collaborate with knowledgeable colleagues in far-�ungparts of a company.

Some of those who have been promoting the use of con-sumer-inspired technologies inside companies say that execu-tives used to a command-and-control world are still reluctant toembrace them, just as they are resistant to allowing employees tobring their own gadgets to work. �This is not how managers weretaught in business school to operate,� says Marc Benio�, the bossof Salesforce.com. But as consumer technology becomes ubiqui-tous, these bene�ts will be even harder to ignore. 7



SPECIAL REPORT

2



1

GENEVIEVE BELL HAS spent the past few months travel-ling to several di�erent countries, rummaging in people’s

cars, and photographing and logging what she found in them.Ms Bell is neither a private investigator nor a spy. Instead sheworks for Intel, the world’s biggest maker of semiconductors,where she runs a team that helps the company analyse how peo-ple interact with technology.

An anthropologist by training, Ms Bell says her interest incars and their contents�which were unpacked with their own-ers’ permission�is a re�ection of the fact that vehicles have be-come places where people use a great deal of personal gadgetry.Her photos often reveal what she calls �a wasteland of electricaldetritus� inside vehicles: everything from multiple chargers fordi�erent kinds of electronic devices to music CDs and other arte-facts of people’s digital lives. �Cars are a perfect proxy for mobilephones,� she says, �because people load lots of stu� into them tobe prepared for every eventuality and then rarely chuck any-thing out.�

Intel’s curiosity about how people use technology in cars ishardly surprising. Carmakers are keen to install extra computingpower in their vehicles in order to impress customers with ataste for technology, and Intel hopes that this will translate into abig new market for its chips. Ford, for instance, has already devel-oped a service called SYNC, based on a Microsoft operating sys-tem. SYNC allows drivers to make calls, play music and do otherthings using voice commands. The car company has also createdAppLink, a feature that lets people link their smartphones to avehicle’s voice-control system and operate their apps with it. Fornow the system works with only a handful of apps, such as Pan-dora, an internet-radio service, but Ford is hoping to expand thatnumber rapidly.

Japan’s Toyota has also been working on an in-car system,called Entune, to which drivers will be able to connect theirsmartphones via Bluetooth wireless links and other means. And

it plans to make driving even more personal by helping people’scars �talk� to them. The �rm has announced plans for a Twitter-like private social network, called Toyota Friend, which will beintegrated into some electric and hybrid vehicles in Japan nextyear. Based on software from Salesforce.com and Microsoft, thiswill enable a car to send a tweet-like message to its owner tellinghim that, say, its battery is running low or a maintenance check isdue. Mr Benio�, Salesforce.com’s boss, says he foresees manymore �product social networks� that will create more intimaterelationships between people and the devices they own.

It is not just vehicles that are becoming more connected. Soare homes, public places like sports stadiums and even aircraft,where passengers are now sometimes o�ered in-�ight Wi-Fi ser-vices for an extra charge. Cisco, a big IT �rm, reckons that there

could be almost 15 billion devices linked to the internet in circula-tion by 2015, up from 7.5 billion last year. These will includeeverything from televisions and gaming consoles (see chart 3) toco�ee machines and cookers.

This has led researchers such as Ms Bell to conclude thatubiquitous computing, or �ubicomp� to its fans, is no longer therealm of science �ction. In a series of articles in the 1990s MarkWeiser, the chief technologist at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Cen-tre (PARC), laid out a vision of a world in which computerswould be everywhere yet all but invisible. Instead of the conven-tional desktop or laptop, Mr Weiser (who died in 1999) and oneof his colleagues, John Seely Brown, predicted that in this newera of �calm technology� gadgets would adapt to people ratherthan vice versa.

Still a wired world

�Calm� is not a word typically associated with most perso-nal technology today. Just trying to get various gadgets to worktogether is often enough to send blood pressures soaring. More-over, the spaghetti of wires, the chargers and the other parapher-nalia of digital life are hardly unobtrusive. And although wire-less broadband connectivity is widespread, it can still be patchyand unreliable. All this is a far cry from the kind of seamless in-teraction between humans and connected devices depicted infuturistic �lms beloved of ubicomp enthusiasts, such as StevenSpielberg’s �Minority Report�.

Ms Bell acknowledges that the infrastructure of computingis still �messy�, but argues this should notbe allowed to obscure the fact that it hasbecome much more widely accessible. BoBegole, a ubicomp expert at Xerox PARC,echoes that view. �We already have a criti-cal mass of devices and wireless net-works,� he explains. �The next step is to

make those devices aware of how humans work and to get themto adapt to their habits.�

If there is one part of the world where personal technologyis on its way towards becoming ubiquitous it is Asia, where sev-eral richer countries have created impressive infrastructures onwhich all sorts of personal technologies can work. South Korea,for instance, plans that every home in the country should havean internet connection with a speed of up to one gigabit per sec-ond (fast enough to download a full-length feature �lm in a mat-ter of seconds). And it also intends greatly to increase the capaci-ty of the country’s wireless-broadband networks.

Singapore has set itself a goal of creating an ultra-fastbroadband infrastructure and sees this as the foundation of awealth of new digital services that will be delivered to its citi-

Ubiquitous computing

Up close

Technology will become even more personal

3Everything online

Source: Informa Telecoms & Media

Internet-connected TVs and games consoles, global forecast, bn

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

2011 12 13 14 15 16

Games consoles TVs

It is not just vehicles that are becoming more connected.So are homes, public places like sports stadiums andeven aircraft



SPECIAL REPORT

2

1

zens. These include �telemedicine�, which allows doctors tomonitor people’s health remotely using devices in patients’homes, and high-de�nition videoconferencing services so thatSingaporeans can keep in touch with relatives, friends and col-leagues. Canalys, a research �rm, reckons that almost two-thirdsof the phones sold in Singapore last year were smartphones. Thesame gadgets are also plentiful in Japan, where many of themcontain near-�eld communication (NFC) chips, which in e�ectturn them into mobile wallets that can be used to pay for grocer-ies, trips on public transport and more.

America, Britain and other countries are also experiment-ing with various mobile-payment technologies, including NFC-enabled phones. Fans of these envisage a future in which peo-ple’s wallets and purses will get sucked into smartphones too.Google, for instance, has already endorsed NFC technology andApple is likely to include some form of mobile-payment capabil-ity in future versions of its iPhone.

A new reality show

Other novel services are giving people far more data aboutthe world around them. There is much excitement in tech circlesabout augmented-reality apps. The Golfscape GPS Range�nderallows golfers to see a picture of the course in front of them andhave it overlaid with useful data, such as the distance to variousbunkers and the green. Other apps, for example Layar and Goo-gle Goggles, combine visual images with data gleaned from webbrowsers and other software. This enables them to overlay theimages with information from many di�erent sources. Someoneusing Layar can point his phone’s camera at a street in Paris andsee information about, say, well-known restaurants in it and callup pictures showing what they looked like in the past.

The ability to capture video and audio easily on smart-

phones has also given a boost to fans of �lifelogging��recordingyour life via electronic media�which was popularised by Gor-don Bell and Jim Gemmell, two Microsoft executives, in �YourLife, Uploaded�. For some time people have been immortalisingtheir thoughts and deeds on Facebook and other social networksfrom PCs. More and more often, they are doing so on the move,from smartphones with apps such as Instagram. A photograph istaken, the time and place are noted automatically, and with a fewtaps the image can be uploaded. �More of people’s lives will becaptured in future,� says Mr Bell, �simply because more bits andbytes are �owing out of these devices.�

In their book Messrs Bell and Gemmell predict that peoplewith chronic ailments will one day have sensors embedded di-rectly in their bodies that can transmit data about their vital signswirelessly to other devices such as their phones. This forecast,which would give a new spin to the slogan �Intel Inside�, mayseem far-fetched, yet some cardiac devices are already equippedwith wireless connectivity that allows them to send data to doc-tors. And gadgets such as a bathroom scale made by Withings, aFrench company, can transmit a person’s weight to a digitalhealth-log on a computer or smartphone.

Rather than have sensors lodged inside their bodies, manypeople may prefer to have them woven into their clothing, orplaced next to rather than under their skin. Some venture capital-ists such as Mr Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz believe that�wearable computing� will be the next big thing in personaltechnology, though the companies that have set their sights onthis area face a di�cult task. History is littered with examples,such as the Seiko Ruputer wristwatch computer, that soundedgreat in theory but turned out to be lemons in practice.

This has not dissuaded Nike, which has produced a rangeof wearable devices that allow people to track their �tness as



2

1

AUGUST 12TH 2011 marked the 30th anniversary of thelaunch of the IBM 5150 personal computer, which estab-

lished the technical standards and design to which many PCssubsequently adhered. In a blog post to mark the occasion, MarkDean, IBM’s chief technology o�cer in the Middle East and Afri-ca, who worked on the original designs, revealed that he had al-ready ditched his PC for a tablet computer. �When I helped de-sign the PC,� he wrote, �I didn’t think I’d live long enough towitness its decline.� He went on to predict that the PC was des-tined to go the same way as typewriters and vinyl records.

The notion that a post-PC era has begun is not universallyaccepted. Microsoft, for instance, likes to talk instead about a�PC-plus� world in which millions of PCs will still be sold everyyear. It is true that the machines that �rst brought computing intopeople’s homes are not about to vanish, not least because thereare many emerging markets where people still crave them. Chi-na, which could outstrip America as the world’s largest marketfor PCs next year, is one of many countries that still has plenty ofpotential for growth. Chinese computer-makers such as Lenovo,which acquired IBM’s PC business in 2005, are well placed topro�t from this rising demand.

Nevertheless, as this special report has argued, a new ageof personal technology is indeed dawning, at least in the rich

world, in which people will depend on a far wider range of de-vices to keep them connected to friends, colleagues and othersaround the clock. It is hard to predict exactly what shape andform all of these gadgets will take, but there are going to be plen-ty of them. In places such as Africa, cheap smartphones couldwell turn out to be people’s primary computing devices. �We arein the process of putting supercomputers in many more people’shands,� says Mr Huang, NVIDIA’s boss.

Billions of new users of personal technology will encour-age tech �rms to pour even more money into R&D and to bringinnovations to market even faster. Already companies are bea-vering away at technologies that will make it easier, say, for peo-ple to use voice commands and gestures to control all kinds ofgadgets. And a cornucopia of apps and other software in devel-opers’ pipelines will make it possible to do many more things onmobile devices. That, in turn, will reinforce the phenomenon ofconsumerisation.

This new era will also see many more upheavals in the techindustry’s landscape. Several big takeovers announced this year,including Microsoft’s $8.5 billion purchase of Skype and Goo-gle’s $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility, have beenmotivated by the realisation that the winners in personal tech-nology’s next phase will be those �rms that boast the most com-pelling ecosystems of devices and cloud-based services. Applehas had something of a head start in this race thanks to the vi-sionary Mr Jobs, but Amazon, Google and a host of other compa-nies are now hard on its heels.

To ubiquity and beyond

As these ecosystems expand, the world will move steadilycloser to the ubiquitous-computing model envisaged by XeroxPARC’s Mark Weiser. As it does so, it will �nd itself grapplingwith a number of thorny issues that include constraints on wire-less connectivity, concerns about individual privacy and wor-ries about the environmental impact of all those billions of gad-gets and gizmos.

Take connectivity �rst. As smartphones and other mobiledevices spread, they will need robust, rapid networks to deliverdata to their owners. The good news is that ultra-fast 4G mobilebroadband networks are being rolled out. According to Deloitte,more than 150 carriers in 60 countries are committed to the de-ployment or trial of 4G services. The snag is that in some coun-

Technology and society

Here comes anyware

Smart thinking is needed about smart gadgets’

in�uence

they exercise. Nor has it put o� Jawbone, which has won a rep-utation for itself by making Bluetooth-equipped headsets andsmart, portable speakers. The company has created a slim brace-let, the UPband, that contains a wealth of sensors and a recharge-able battery all attached to a �exible steel frame enclosed in aspecial, rubber-like coating. Among other things, the band canrecord how much distance the wearer has covered in a day andhow many calories he has burned, and can even monitor hissleep patterns. Data from the device can be uploaded to an appon a smartphone and then shared with the wearer’s friends onvarious social networks.

Dressed in devices

Hosain Rahman, Jawbone’s boss, foresees many more de-vices like the UP band creating what he calls �everywhere com-puting�, with microprocessors and sensors embedded in allsorts of things, from shirts to jewellery, and linked by a �body-area network�. Other companies such as Looxcie, which makescheap, wearable video cameras, are also hoping to pro�t from amore transparent world.

These devices may remain minority tastes for a while, ifthey ever catch on at all. But smartphones, tablets and other mo-bile digital devices are likely to keep the consumer-electronics in-dustry busy for some time to come. The ability of these gadgetsto deliver the mobile internet to millions�and ultimately bil-lions�of people is going to have a profound impact on the world.�We’re really at a very nascent stage of this revolution,� says Vi-jay Gurbaxani, a professor of information systems at the Univer-sity of California, Irvine. Mr Gurbaxani is right, but some of itsimplications are already becoming clear. 7



SPECIAL REPORT


tries, including America, radio spectrum ideal for mobile videoand data communications is in short supply. Governments couldhelp by, say, encouraging broadcasters whose audiences aredwindling to relinquish more of their bandwidth.

They will also need to monitor closely the impact that newkinds of devices have on individual privacy. Concerns have al-ready been raised about smartphones’ location-tracking capabil-ities, which can reveal users’ whereabouts if data are not proper-ly protected. Wearable devices that track people’s vital signs arealso going to be collecting mountains of extremely sensitive in-formation. �We are all part of a brave new experiment in privacywhose outcome is unclear,� says Alessandro Acquisti, a profes-sor at Carnegie Mellon University.

The best hope for a positive outcome is to promote clearprinciples that govern how these sensitive data are collected andput to work. The main one should be that it is users who owntheir data and they should be able to control what is done withthe stu�. That means, among other things, asking them to �optin� to services that gather sensitive information and making iteasy for them to opt out again at any time. Firms should also betransparent about what information is being collected and howit is being used. At the same time, people need to take more re-sponsibility for themselves�for example by choosing robustpasswords and keycodes on their mobile devices rather than tak-ing a cavalier attitude to their own data.

A third area of potential friction involves the environment.As it pumps out many more gadgets, the consumer-electronicsindustry is starting to attract the kind ofscrutiny typically reserved for oil compa-nies and mining �rms. For instance, earli-er this year Chinese environmental cam-paigners took Apple to task for usingsuppliers they claimed were guilty of pol-

luting. Activists have also lambasted working conditions atplaces such as Foxconn, which has taken several steps to im-prove standards at its factories. Big consumer-tech �rms willneed to intensify their e�orts to police subcontractors and thinkeven harder about how to make their products greener if theyare to avoid continual criticism in the post-PC world.

People power

Governments will also have to come to terms with the factthat mobile devices and online services such as Twitter and Face-book are empowering citizens in novel and occasionally unset-tling ways. Smartphones tapping into Twitter and other messag-ing services have been blamed for the rioting that swept throughEnglish cities earlier this year. Politicians even called for RIM

temporarily to shut down its BlackBerry Messenger service,which was being used by some rioters to co-ordinate attacks. Yetslamming social media and smartphones will not solve the un-derlying causes of unrest.

There has been much dis-cussion, too, about the role thatmobile phones and social me-dia have played in stirring upgroundswells of protest inplaces such as north Africa andthe Middle East. Some observ-ers, such as Clay Shirky, a profes-sor at New York University, haveargued that they have been animportant catalyst for change.Others, such as Evgeny Moro-zov, a visiting scholar at StanfordUniversity, worry that they caneasily be abused by repressiveregimes to track and monitoropponents.

Protest and tweet

Although talk of �Twitterrevolutions� is greatly over-blown, there is little doubt thattweets and the use of other so-cial media helped attract atten-tion to the revolutionaries’cause. And although Mr Moro-zov is right to point out that newtechnologies can aid surveil-lance from above, smartphonesand small, wearable cameraswill also boost the ability of ac-tivists to conduct �sousveillance� from below. Citizens can usethese and other gadgets to capture what is happening and trans-mit evidence of abuse swiftly to the outside world via Twitterand other channels. �Technology is de�nitely serving as an ac-celerant,� argues Jared Cohen, a former o�cial in America’s StateDepartment who is now the director of Google Ideas, a think-tank run by the internet company.

It can also accelerate progress in other areas, as this reporthas argued. Companies, in particular, will need to develop digi-tal instincts to take advantage of the talents of their own employ-ee-revolutionaries, who are storming IT departments’ barri-cades, armed with tablets and smartphones. Instead of beingearly adopters of new technology, companies will need to be-come fast adapters to whatever devices their employees believewill equip them to do their jobs most e�ectively. Those �rms thatget this transition right stand to bene�t enormously from havingmore creative and con�dent workforces. Those that do not will�nd it di�cult to attract talented sta� and risk losing ground totheir competitors.

The reversal of the innovation conveyor belt highlighted byMr Andreessen, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist, represents ahuge opportunity for governments, armies and other organisa-tions too. By exploiting powerful and cheap consumer technol-ogy, they will be able to save money and develop brand-new ca-pabilities at a time when budgets are tight. Many of the mostinnovative ways to use new gadgets and services will be discov-ered by the people for whom they were originally designed.

The very last �ight of America’s space shuttle, which tookplace in July, carried two iPhones for the �rst time, using an appthat measures things such as altitude and orbital location.NASA’s use of the smartphone won it plenty of headlines. Butwhen it came to putting an iPhone into space, the Geissbühlersof Brooklyn beat the mighty space agency to it. In the new worldof personal technology, even the sky is no longer the limit. 7

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A new age of personaltechnology is dawning inwhich people will dependon a far wider range ofdevices to keep themconnected to friends andcolleagues

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