Life will be like this in the future, but what about mobile technologies? What could be the use of mobile phones -or more accurately- mobile devices?

In today’s world, not only for voice communication or text messaging, mobile phones are also used for internet access and many other useful applications. They are small tools for us to reach out to the internet and make use of it as best as they can. Most importantly, they even started to replace our laptops, which are also a common replacement for desktop PCs for most of us.

There are a lot of reasons why mobile devices are becoming a replacement for their predecessors. Here are my reasons for that:

• They are small, easy to carry around, and better than ultra-portable, they are mobile!
• They are very personal. You don’t usually give away your mobile phone to anyone even for a couple of minutes. It is yours!
• There is a billing platform embedded into it. So you will not need a credit card in the future to buy a cup of coffee in Starbucks.
• It knows you! There is also an identification system in it which can authenticate you.
• It knows where you are! If you need a pharmacy, it can narrow down the search to 5 km radius for you.
• It has broadband internet, you can even have Mbits/s! So you are not stuck with good old GPRS.
• It knows you better than you do! Since you live your life with it, anytime & anywhere, whom you talk, connect or share with, what you like, what you don’t like, what do you pay for etc… There is a huge amount of accumulation of information for a better mobile and social experience.

Let me follow some of the headings from Ian Sands’ post and make my comments.

How will individuals use IT in 2012?
Ian mentions about an easy use of a workflow in 2012. Well, in Turkcell, people are already using such services. Many of the workflow decisions can also be made through our mobile phones. People do not need to open their mailboxes, click the link in it and pass through login screens… Just click it and it is done!

What will business look like in 2020?
I cannot agree more with Ian, since there will be a blend of personal and business lives, people will make use of it for their own productivity. I believe Googleplex is one of the best examples for that. Business and personal lives of people working at Google are not really separated, but they are happy because they have all of their needs met. They usually don’t need to go back to their homes for relaxing or resting, they do it at Googleplex! And once they are ready to get back to work, they can instantly get productive again in a couple of minutes. So Googleplex is neither a workplace nor a home, it is both…

What about the public sector in 2020?
There will be less and less time but more and more information. Hence, education will be mobile. Not only students, but also lots of people will use m-learning, to be more productive, more efficient. Obviously there will be classrooms to some extent but the low cost and time efficiency of m-learning will drive the industry.

How will IT be used in healthcare?
Ian says: “At present, the best healthcare tends to be in cities. But imagine a scenario where a patient could ask questions of an expert hundreds of miles away via a large display in their living room.” As demoed in CeBIT Eurasia 2008, Turkcell has that kind of system to spread better healthcare services to the rural areas of Turkey, where the healthcare services are not good, or not present. But there is a crucial point: not only a large screen just for communication, via Turkcell’s solution with its valuable partners, people are also able to send their electrocardiogram or blood pressure to the doctors even thousands of kilometers away in a couple of seconds.

How will IT be used in banking?
Did you know you can withdraw money from an ATM with your mobile phone? Did you know you don’t need any coins to buy a coke from a vending machine? Did you know you can pay your credit card bill with your mobile phone? These are all real and live applications on Turkcell network. You can withdraw money from an ATM via Turkcell MobilImza (Mobile Signature), buy a coke from a vending machine via Turkcell MobilOdeme (Mobile Payment) and pay your credit card bill or transfer money to your mom using only your mobile phone!

How will IT be used in manufacturing or agriculture?
I mentioned about how workflow can be used to increase productivity in business life above. There are also a couple of great examples of such systems in manufacturing and agriculture. As a telemetry solution, Seramatik, think of monitoring a greenhouse from your mobile phone. If the temperature of the greenhouse increases, you can start ventilation or greenhouse fogging remotely with a single click. If there is a critical condition, wouldn’t it be nice to be notified with an SMS message or an emergency call from your greenhouse?

How will IT be used in nature?
Another great example is about the forests. Unfortunately, Turkey continues lose its green cover every year due to forest fires. Once a fire starts in a forest, it takes a lot of time to detect and take a preemptive action against it while it is still a small fire. However, with Kodalfa’s telemetry solution, monitoring several parameters such as temperature and moisture, forest fires can be detected earlier and save forests as well as reducing costs to extinguish a huge fire.

To wrap it up, there are a lot of mobile solutions in every aspect of our lives and most of them can be realized with today’s technology. And this is only the beginning of the mobile evolution. As the mobile devices get smarter and powerful, the solutions will be a lot more, helpful and life-enriching for us. Having said that; I believe Turkcell, as a technology company, is on the right track with its vision: “To ease and enrich the lives of our customers with communication and technology solutions.”