What will the next personal device be?

While writing the blog post a year ago, my mind started to drift to a futuristic path. What will the future personal device be? Looking back at my thoughts 12 months ago, i realize progress has been made in many of the areas i discussed. But at the same time i also were accurate when stating how much progress we will see in 12 months. What do you think, will it be a new device replacing smartphone, or a combination of intelligent devices co-operating to assisting us in the future? And how will they shape our behavior? In the same way the smartphones has change our daily life…we have live to see!

Original Story:

Many businesses I am talking with today have legacy, and a static view on how they manage/control the personal devices used within their organization. Most of them are past the transition from a windows/PC only world, to the new reality with iPads and mobile phones to manage as well. The solution today is often to standardize on which hardware devices that are allowed within the organization. The range of devices are often limited by which (or which combination of) management infrastructure the organization has in operation.

My challenge to these types of organizations, are how they manage the increasing number of Smart Watches within their organization. I have not until today met a customer that has a management solution for Smart Watches, yet, but most people realize after a short moment that the same security risk that was introduced with Smart Phones now has emerged again.

Of course there will be a constant race against the next device, but what technologies will the next device use?

Let us first set the environment for a future personal device: Many people are pointing to augmented- and virtual-reality (AR/VR) devices, and there is some on the market today and more to be expected soon. Because of my history at Microsoft, I have adopted the thinking from the Microsoft HoloLens development team. AR/VR is mostly about a new way of interacting with computers, and yes today, we need a somewhat bulky pair of glasses. And yes, current version of HoloLens is running Windows 10 and can be managed as a device. But this is generation one technology, I think the evolution will be quicker than many of us expect today. Yes, we will interact with the device in a more natural way, speaking, seeing and touching to interact with information. No need for a keyboard, and if you need a screen, most windows will work and small, hidden, network connected projectors will allow you to use any wall if you need a huge screen.

Computer power will be available from something we call the Cloud today (I am too old to believe something will have the same name forever), the concept is sometime referred to as ambiguous computing. So the future personal device will not have to include a lot of processing power.

Accessing this computer power will be a non-issue, high-speed network access will be available wherever you are.

Long term storage will again be provided from Cloud Services, but will it be a need for local storage? For some content maybe. But it is very likely that storage will be available in several different types of device in your office, home and locations in between. Instead of having the storage in a device, a possible scenario would be a type of personal content distribution network, that makes sure the content you need will be available near you.

This introduces the scary part of the future personal device. How will it know what content I need?

Well, take what Siri, Cortana, Google Now or Alexa can do today, add all information from your next generation Fitbit or Microsoft Band and combine this with next generation Machine Learning predicting your behavior. It is very likely your future personal device will tell you what to do next, before you even realize what options you have. In that sense you will be managed by your personal device. Are you ready for this?

The main concern for organizations is: will your future personal device allow itself to be managed/controlled by your company? It is very likely that the intelligence available to your device is superior to the capabilities available from your own organization. The future will probably be dictated by which legislation and policies that will be enforced to keep the technology in our service, and not the other way around.

A last note regarding the time-frame. Bill Gates once wrote something similar to “You have a tendency to over-estimate what you will accomplish in next 12 months, but underestimate what will happened next 10 years”. I think this is very true for what we will see in the area of personal devices.