The New Tech That Will Take Us Beyond the Smartphone. Maybe.
BARCELONA—It’s a tough time for the smartphone market. Not that you’d know from the 2,000-plus exhibitors and 80,000-ish attendees jammed into a conference center for MWC, the mobile-tech show formerly known as Mobile World Congress. Everyone seems to have optimism about the future, abuzz with buzzwords to sell it.
So I began playing a game with myself. The rules of Buzzword Bingo are simple. As fast as you can, scan the trade-show floor and spot all the acronyms: 5G! MR! IOT!
In just 45 minutes of walking around, I spotted about 150. My prize? VR-AI…Very Real Acid Indigestion.
Smartphones really are groaning. Unit shipments recently marked the largest-ever single-quarter decline, according to analyst firm IDC, with an 18% drop in the 2022 holiday quarter. Shipments also fell 11% for the year.
“Everybody has a smartphone—it goes through cycles, so there’s nothing unusual there,”
Qualcomm Inc.
QCOM -1.40%
Chief Executive
Cristiano Amon
told me in an interview at my Wall Street Journal Tech Things event here. He said he’s encouraged by the digital transformations happening in the Internet of Things (buzzword!) and cars.
Mr. Amon’s message was similar to that of others I interviewed this week: There’s still smartphone innovation left, especially around artificial intelligence (buzzword!). But larger leaps will soon come to the devices around us—headsets, wearables, vehicles and more.
Here are some of the big ideas, which might lead to the next multibillion-unit invention or the next 3-D TV. Yes, a dead buzzword.
AI will make phones smarter.
On a phone powered by one of Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon chips, I typed “impressionist painting of an interview at a conference.” In under 15 seconds, I had an AI-generated image created by Stable Diffusion, a text-to-image model developed by Stability AI. The magic trick? The phone did it all without a connection to the internet.
An AI-generated image created on a Qualcomm chip-powered phone. No internet connection needed.
Photo:
Joanna Stern/The Wall Street Journal
Stable Diffusion is in a category of tools labeled “generative AI,” meaning they can produce original works such as unique visuals and unscripted text.
Sometimes there’s a wait while systems such as Microsoft Corp.’s Bing and OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Dall-E 2 generate results. The task is computer intensive and you’re sending your request to a server—along with lots of other people. That’s why there’s interest in more work being done by the computers in our hands. Qualcomm refers to it as “hybrid AI architecture,” which combines cloud and on-device processing.
Samsung Electronics Co.
is looking closely at incorporating generative-AI products from Microsoft and Google, which recently introduced Bard, its ChatGPT competitor. The electronics giant has partnerships with both companies.
In an interview with Patrick Chomet, a senior Samsung mobile-business executive, I joked that, on a Samsung phone, we’ll have to decide if we Bing or Bard. He said he expects to integrate generative-AI tools throughout the operating system and services.
My take: I’m drinking the generative-AI Kool-Aid. It’s got a long way to go, but I see big changes to how we interact with computers and what they can do for us. We’re going to want the services on our pocket computers to be faster and more power efficient.
Mixed reality will change our interactions.
Executives I interviewed all agreed that “mixed reality” (that is, a combo of VR and AR) headsets are the next big thing. We’ll all put them on and head into the metaverse to…do stuff.
HTC Corp.
2498 -1.97%
will begin selling its new Vive XR Elite this month. Its CEO,
Cher Wang,
told me she envisions spending whole days in a combination of the virtual and physical world. We will go to meetings, review presentations, see projected 3-D models and computer monitors in our real space, then meditate in a virtual Iceland. The headset, which I tried out, is lighter and more comfortable than any other I’ve worn.
Joanna Stern tries out HTC’s Vive XR Elite at the MWC conference.
Photo:
Maurizio Martorana for The Wall Street Journal
Mr. Amon said the combination of headsets and faster 5G networks will make communication with holographic avatars feel more natural.
Mr. Chomet said Samsung is currently working on a headset with Google and Qualcomm. It’s talking to app developers and exploring the best device uses in communications, productivity and entertainment.
My take: Sure, a headset can offer a more immersive 3-D experience than any phone or laptop. But the technology continues to be a solution in search of a problem. The work applications are intriguing, but the headsets have to shrink in size—while getting better battery life—to make them devices we really want to wear.
IoT will connect everything.
Our wearables, cars and home devices are already communicating with our phones and each other. My front-door lock tells me when my parents drop in for a surprise visit. And as sensors, modems and other components get smaller, better and faster—and cellular 5G networks get snappier—we can expect more of this.
Mr. Chomet talked about a future where “we have a distributed set of devices that are most adapted to the human senses—eyes and ears and maybe smell.” The phone will be the center of the network, but headsets, earbuds and watches will become more capable and independent.
And now a Buzzword Bingo daily double: IoT merges with the metaverse.
I heard the term “digital twin” quite a bit. Think of an airplane in real life, and a copy simulated in the metaverse. Sensors in the real airplane report problems to engineers, who then use the virtual version to test repairs before deciding on the best approach.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
Which tech buzzwords are you most excited about? Join the conversation below.
Eventually your wearables might help generate your own digital twin to explore medical and physical issues, perhaps simulate a diet before doing it in real life. (Welcome to the next season of “Black Mirror.”)
Mr. Amon, specifically, talked about Qualcomm’s progress in cars. It’s working to provide cars with always-on mobile connectivity and chips to enable autonomy, fully digital dashboards and more.
My take: It sounds like every sci-fi movie, which is maybe why we don’t actually hear much of the benefit of all this connectivity. I am particularly excited about the connected cars and the advancement of the dashboard. Maybe that’s because my car’s unintuitive AC controls seem to have one objective: to cryogenically freeze me.
On the bright side, if it succeeds, I can be unfrozen centuries from now, when someone finally figures out why we’d all want to live in the metaverse.
—Sign up here for Tech Things With Joanna Stern, a new weekly newsletter. Everything is now a tech thing. Columnist Joanna Stern is your guide, giving analysis and answering your questions about our always-connected world.
Write to Joanna Stern at [email protected]
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
BARCELONA—It’s a tough time for the smartphone market. Not that you’d know from the 2,000-plus exhibitors and 80,000-ish attendees jammed into a conference center for MWC, the mobile-tech show formerly known as Mobile World Congress. Everyone seems to have optimism about the future, abuzz with buzzwords to sell it.
So I began playing a game with myself. The rules of Buzzword Bingo are simple. As fast as you can, scan the trade-show floor and spot all the acronyms: 5G! MR! IOT!
In just 45 minutes of walking around, I spotted about 150. My prize? VR-AI…Very Real Acid Indigestion.
Smartphones really are groaning. Unit shipments recently marked the largest-ever single-quarter decline, according to analyst firm IDC, with an 18% drop in the 2022 holiday quarter. Shipments also fell 11% for the year.
“Everybody has a smartphone—it goes through cycles, so there’s nothing unusual there,”
Qualcomm Inc.
QCOM -1.40%
Chief Executive
Cristiano Amon
told me in an interview at my Wall Street Journal Tech Things event here. He said he’s encouraged by the digital transformations happening in the Internet of Things (buzzword!) and cars.
Mr. Amon’s message was similar to that of others I interviewed this week: There’s still smartphone innovation left, especially around artificial intelligence (buzzword!). But larger leaps will soon come to the devices around us—headsets, wearables, vehicles and more.
Here are some of the big ideas, which might lead to the next multibillion-unit invention or the next 3-D TV. Yes, a dead buzzword.
AI will make phones smarter.
On a phone powered by one of Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon chips, I typed “impressionist painting of an interview at a conference.” In under 15 seconds, I had an AI-generated image created by Stable Diffusion, a text-to-image model developed by Stability AI. The magic trick? The phone did it all without a connection to the internet.
An AI-generated image created on a Qualcomm chip-powered phone. No internet connection needed.
Photo:
Joanna Stern/The Wall Street Journal
Stable Diffusion is in a category of tools labeled “generative AI,” meaning they can produce original works such as unique visuals and unscripted text.
Sometimes there’s a wait while systems such as Microsoft Corp.’s Bing and OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Dall-E 2 generate results. The task is computer intensive and you’re sending your request to a server—along with lots of other people. That’s why there’s interest in more work being done by the computers in our hands. Qualcomm refers to it as “hybrid AI architecture,” which combines cloud and on-device processing.
Samsung Electronics Co.
is looking closely at incorporating generative-AI products from Microsoft and Google, which recently introduced Bard, its ChatGPT competitor. The electronics giant has partnerships with both companies.
In an interview with Patrick Chomet, a senior Samsung mobile-business executive, I joked that, on a Samsung phone, we’ll have to decide if we Bing or Bard. He said he expects to integrate generative-AI tools throughout the operating system and services.
My take: I’m drinking the generative-AI Kool-Aid. It’s got a long way to go, but I see big changes to how we interact with computers and what they can do for us. We’re going to want the services on our pocket computers to be faster and more power efficient.
Mixed reality will change our interactions.
Executives I interviewed all agreed that “mixed reality” (that is, a combo of VR and AR) headsets are the next big thing. We’ll all put them on and head into the metaverse to…do stuff.
HTC Corp.
2498 -1.97%
will begin selling its new Vive XR Elite this month. Its CEO,
Cher Wang,
told me she envisions spending whole days in a combination of the virtual and physical world. We will go to meetings, review presentations, see projected 3-D models and computer monitors in our real space, then meditate in a virtual Iceland. The headset, which I tried out, is lighter and more comfortable than any other I’ve worn.
Joanna Stern tries out HTC’s Vive XR Elite at the MWC conference.
Photo:
Maurizio Martorana for The Wall Street Journal
Mr. Amon said the combination of headsets and faster 5G networks will make communication with holographic avatars feel more natural.
Mr. Chomet said Samsung is currently working on a headset with Google and Qualcomm. It’s talking to app developers and exploring the best device uses in communications, productivity and entertainment.
My take: Sure, a headset can offer a more immersive 3-D experience than any phone or laptop. But the technology continues to be a solution in search of a problem. The work applications are intriguing, but the headsets have to shrink in size—while getting better battery life—to make them devices we really want to wear.
IoT will connect everything.
Our wearables, cars and home devices are already communicating with our phones and each other. My front-door lock tells me when my parents drop in for a surprise visit. And as sensors, modems and other components get smaller, better and faster—and cellular 5G networks get snappier—we can expect more of this.
Mr. Chomet talked about a future where “we have a distributed set of devices that are most adapted to the human senses—eyes and ears and maybe smell.” The phone will be the center of the network, but headsets, earbuds and watches will become more capable and independent.
And now a Buzzword Bingo daily double: IoT merges with the metaverse.
I heard the term “digital twin” quite a bit. Think of an airplane in real life, and a copy simulated in the metaverse. Sensors in the real airplane report problems to engineers, who then use the virtual version to test repairs before deciding on the best approach.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
Which tech buzzwords are you most excited about? Join the conversation below.
Eventually your wearables might help generate your own digital twin to explore medical and physical issues, perhaps simulate a diet before doing it in real life. (Welcome to the next season of “Black Mirror.”)
Mr. Amon, specifically, talked about Qualcomm’s progress in cars. It’s working to provide cars with always-on mobile connectivity and chips to enable autonomy, fully digital dashboards and more.
My take: It sounds like every sci-fi movie, which is maybe why we don’t actually hear much of the benefit of all this connectivity. I am particularly excited about the connected cars and the advancement of the dashboard. Maybe that’s because my car’s unintuitive AC controls seem to have one objective: to cryogenically freeze me.
On the bright side, if it succeeds, I can be unfrozen centuries from now, when someone finally figures out why we’d all want to live in the metaverse.
—Sign up here for Tech Things With Joanna Stern, a new weekly newsletter. Everything is now a tech thing. Columnist Joanna Stern is your guide, giving analysis and answering your questions about our always-connected world.
Write to Joanna Stern at [email protected]
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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