TABLE OF CONTENTS Needless to say, there will always be surprises when it comes to the next general mobile applications. Recall that the web was initially designed for European researchers to exchange technical documents. Now it is the platform for Internet computing. Also recall that instant messaging tools stemmed from toy applications that allowed people to chat casually online. Now it is moving quickly into an enterprise computing environment. Also recall that GPS was once used exclusively by the military. Now we are seeing a trend of each smart phone having a GPS chipset.
Indeed, we cannot predict the future, especially from a technologist's perspective; however, in this book of next-generation mobile computing, we have tried to present a complete picture of the mobile computing realm, which essentially is comprised of three types of elements:
The trend of convergence between communication, computing, and consumer electronics
Enabling cutting-edge technologies and related researches, system building blocks, established architectures, challenges and approaches, interesting R&D projects, and commercial systems
Existing and future mobile services, systems, and applications
This is indeed a rapidly changing field. It is impossible to cover all the amazing advancements even for a single wireless technology or emerging mobile application, and some of the systems and technologies may quickly become outdated and be replaced by new ones. However, it was not our intent to enumerate every proposed solution or system within a specific area; instead, we wanted to identify the core idea either technological or business-related that could be possibly adopted to solve...
