This phone, the Hitachi Wooo H001, has a stereoscopic IPS display which can show 3D images. It'll appear in Japan in April 2009.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Everything will become 3D. The content of the traditional producers won’t be at the top anymore, but internet content. That can ensure a fast and flexible break-through. Eventually every screen will become 3D, every screen will start to react to the position of our eyes so that it’ll seem like we’re looking through the telephone. This is a push in that direction.

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

This thermometer, the RMR500 Eco Clima Control, of the Australian Oregon Scientific can work for three months in a row after charging in sunlight. Available in the spring for US$99.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

We’ll start to see more and more products that can take care of themselves: connect to networks on their own, power themselves, so that we can take it easy (not so much to save power, that’s not our motivation). This kind of devices (and then maybe not a thermometer) will conquer the third world, where there’s no lack of sunshine but of good electricity facilities, rapidly.

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

The Flip Mino HD recorder is an extremely simple device, as big as a cell phone, weights 93 grams, has a built in usb-connector (no more looking for cables) and sends movies to your favourite website with the press of a button. It only has one physical button (the on-off switch) and the other buttons are touch-buttons that light up when necessary. Despite its small dimensions and simple design it makes qualitatively excellent images with High Definition-resolution (720p) and you can even edit movies on the fly.

Every camera can be equipped with your own design. We're not talking about stickers or click-covers, but a real print. There are hundreds of designs available from which you can choose one, but you can also get to work with all sorts of patterns and your own pictures to determine your camera's look all by yourself. Furthermore you can release your design to others and have it added to the gallery of the online shop. Every time a camera with your design is sold you get $10,- commission. The price of the camera is the same no matter what the design.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

There are all sorts of trends hidden in this example.

All traditional marketing Ps are under pressure.
Product and Price: everything is becoming personal again. Currently the price is the same, but later we’ll get a ‘free’ customised design, but if we want something really special, especially designed for you, or maybe a limited edition, or with the designer’s name/logo on it, then we’ll pay (a lot) more. This is how photo and video cameras become part of your identity, brands with a true symbolic function.

Beside that the involvement of the consumer,  the more open attitude of brands and taking the consumer seriously is standard in this. A nice example of brand coming-out.

And finally everything is becoming simpler, simpler, simpler. Technology is disappearing and interaction with a virtual world is left.

Related trends

• Brand coming out
• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

NEC's M155 Messenger is a handy, wireless communication device that looks like a watch. It's designed for people with jobs where they have to work with their hands a lot and still have to be available all the time, like in hotels, security or health care. Besides transmitting text messages the M155 will also turn on an audio channel using a built in microphone and speaker. The M155 also seamlessly integrates with the telephone service and the (messaging) applications of organisations.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Cell phones are disappearing and integrated in watches. If we really need a bigger screen, we’ll take a portable medium which is bigger along with us, but in principle we can make do with watches like that. Not just privately, but especially for business, as this example shows. A watch of the business is a term you can expect.

Casio's new digital camera, the Exilim, projects a small character in the screen. It concerns a character from Doraemon, a popular Japanese animation show. The face is used to give visual signals on how the photo will look. If the photo isn't focused right, Doraemon won't look happy. But if the photo is focused right (and the people in the picture smile on top of that), Doraemon smiles broadly.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brands let themselves be represented by characters more and more. Currently on this specific screen, but later you’ll see this characters when you sort your photos on big screens. More examples will follow.

Related trends

• Brand visualization

The HTC T829 is the first cell phone in the world that has WiMax, wireless technology which makes it possible to reach data speeds of (in theory) 70 Mbps (Megabit per second) with your cell phone. In comparison: HSDPA reaches a maximum of 14 Mbps, but most European broadband connections don't get further than 3.6 or 7.2 Mbps.

With this new phone VOIP calling is the most normal thing in the world:

The HTC MAX 4G supports GSM calls using a SIM card from any Russian network operator and when both callers are Yota subscribers, the call will automatically be routed as a VoIP call over the Yota Mobile WiMAX network.

Yota is the VOIP supplier.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Calling someone is slowly becoming a part of traffic. Instead of calling beside the internet, speech is becoming a natural part of the virtual world. In time we’ll be able to use speech in the virtual world to call our friends, priced as if they’re only a kilometer away. That’ll soon be the most normal thing in the world. Even for the regular Joe.

The business model for telecom operators will be revamped completely though: the data line will become the basis, rather than calling or texting. They can earn extra money by giving you access to third party services (read: regular websites) that ask an access fee per minute, like webcam sites already do. You might pay 10 cents per minute and the operators take 1 cent. Still 1 cent. Still a model.

TravelPilot 700 N700, the newly available navigational system by Blaupunkt shows the street as we see it through our front window and also shows the desired directions for where we're driving. Here a demovideo. The device has a camera at the back which in a manner of speaking is see-through, like looking through a windowpane, and then projects the arrows real-time onto the screen. With this the manufacturer has a world-scoop.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Ever more we’re putting a shell around the physical world to interpret it quickly. Currently in a separate system, soon with our front window, through special glasses to our contact lenses. Less and less weight to carry while we’re helped more and more efficiently. We can ask questions with anything we aim at and get answers. And walking a route alone will be as easy as someone walking with you holding your hand. This is again a great step in that direction.

This new photo frame by Kodak is connected to Flickr through a wireless home network. It automatically shows you the newest photos on your own photostream, of those of someone else if they register on your photos (and if they're public). You can also look up the news, weather and sports through the touch screen. Obviously you can also play videos. Other than that, the frame fronts can be replaced by something more suited to one's own interior.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Photo frames are slowly becoming completely screens connected to the virtual world that’s beginning to emerge. We’ve already got contact with the weather, sports and news brands. And that too is what brands will have to take into account, that they’ll be contacted from small threadbare touch-screens in one’s home. Beyond that it’s waiting for the next development in the photo-industry: that if we make a picture, it’ll be published online automatically (and also back-upped) and linked to other people who are taking a picture in the same spot at the same moment.

With Nintendo WII- Speak it's possible to have contact with other players in another physical location and to communicate through speech. A separate microphone is needed for this.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

And so the virtual world is shaped more and more. We’ll be in the same spot together with thousands of others, think of a popconcert for example. That’s something other than being with thousands in a game at the same time, that’s just like being with thousands in the same city, it doesn’t have the same effect of being somewhere ‘at the same time’. That effect is slowly being created and will lead to some very intensive experiences. It started with typed text, it’s now following with voice, but soon we’ll have people around us everywhere, like it’s all real. We just won’t be able to touch them.

Chinese CKing is the first in the world to create a cell phone, the CKing E1000, with a built-in projector. With it users can easily share movies with others through using a wall in the vicinity.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

We can project everything life-sized around us. Soon we’ll be able to point out things in these images and our cell phone will respond to them. Or control them with our voice or even our posture. It’s getting ever easier to picture something of that world. A world wherein brands fill in the dialogue in a completely different way from what we think of now.

Google has unveiled a telephone with a built-in compass. 360 degrees recordings of a location (for example seen through Google Maps) can be looked at realistically where you are. You aim for a specific point and if you turn the image will turn with you. It looks very logical.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This technology will take mobility coaching brands a step further. It’ll guide you on foot, by train, by subway, by bus, by bicycle, motor or even on an airport effortlessly from A to B. No more talk of getting lost then.

Based on where you currently are and who's in your contact list, Apple's new iPhone looks for nearby contacts. This is possible through the built-in GPS module and the contact list if it has addresses added.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

All information will become increasingly more available in real time. Most people have to change addresses etc themselves when they get an email of someone who moved. Soon this will be automatic. With your social network in your pocket you’ll be walking through a strange city, past the door of an old acquaintance who’s moved five times by now. Quite something to be able to just ring the doorbell…

LG has released a telephone onto the Korean market with a silicone key pad that feels like human skin.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Technology is disappearing into the background. It’s getting smaller and smaller. What remains becomes a sort of ornamental trinket, for example, ear phones that have advanced sound filtering, amplification and transformation, or look like a part of nature. Technology is becoming more natural, increasingly friendly and more human. This is a nice example of the phenomenon.

The WII Balance Board is a sort scale that can accurately determine where you put pressure on it. Apart from all kinds of fitness exercises, the Board also makes it possible to train your balance (fc).

Promoting balance in mind and body is not a short contemporary hype, not a trend like 'we are going to play games again', but a very long term trend. This trend however is only beginning, and will only further develop after the world economy has come to balance, we can hardly speak of low wage countries, and the automizing and robotizing trends have allowed us to work less. We then will finally have the time to structurally work on ourselves. We will then be able to do things we now consider 'inexplicable', as 'magic', or supra natural. It will take some time, I am talking about 2050, but the first products to help us in this are now introduced. And these are just brands again.

The Epoc right and left ear hearing aids from Oticon work closely together to strengthe the sounds from the environment as natural as possible. Through this, the user can hear exactly what direction a sound is coming from. It doesn't stop here though: via Bluetooth these smart ear plugs are aslo connected to a mobile phone, MP3 player or navigation system, thus forming a personal communication center. Because of this, Epoc already is a gadget for music loving youth in the USA (vo, Dutch). Ear plugs are becoming a standard accessory, used even more than glasses. Visible, as (costly) jewelery, or invisible in our ears. With that, we get endless possibilities for communication with the (virtual) world around us.

It is now possible to send an MMS to the Parrot DF7700. Thanks to a built-in SIM card the device has its own phone number that can be used to directly communicate with it (mc, Dutch). All hardware products get their own number we can use to directly communicate with. And not just us: when we start a dialogue with the brand, the producer of a device, it directly is clear what copy we are talking about. Products will no longer be anonymous, and producers will always stay connected to their products. No matter if they are with their original user, or the second or third user. Five, ten or fifty years later. This is a development in that direction.