Berners-Lee began his keynote by discussing the improvements we've seen in technology in recent years, most notably the ability of our devices to be location-aware. However, he says, "location-awareness is just the tip of the iceberg." Devices already know so much about you: your geographical position, which way is up, which direction you're headed, etc., but future devices may know more than this. For example, they may know about your medical information and your physical state. Perhaps they could tell when you're excited by measuring heart rate increases, he said.

Another major improvement which is impacting the Web is the explosion of data available online, a project which he has heavily contributed to, here in the U.K. with data.gov.uk and its U.S. counterpart data.gov. Not so long ago, less than 10 years ago, in fact, "data" on the Web consisted of governments uploading a scanned document, like a spreadsheet that would be posted as a PDF on a government-hosted website. If anyone ever wanted to do anything with that data, they would have to re-type the information. Today, that same type of data is more accessible - the raw data itself is available and, says Berners-Lee, there's a race between governments and other organizations as to who can provide the best and most interesting data.

As for how data access relates to mobile, Berners-Lee explained that data drives development on mobile, just as it does on the Web as a whole. Even a basic calendaring type of application is data-driven. By combining the aspects of mobile technology, like location-awareness, with the semantic Web of data, entirely new types of mobile applications can exist. Most recently, augmented reality applications are an example of this pairing, tying together location with data to identify points of interest just by aiming your mobile phone at something like a landmark or building.

4 Concerns about the Future of Mobile

All that being said, Berners-Lee also mentioned that there are concerns which we need to be aware of when moving forward with mobile technology. They are as follows:

1. Privacy

The challenge of privacy is one many companies, both mobile and otherwise, have been dealing with in recent months. However, on mobile phones, the problem that has not been worked out yet is how to allow a user to share their location while still making it easy for them to understand when they're sharing critical information, how much control they have over that information and who can access that data. The challenge here is how to do all this without getting in the way of the user's experience.

The solution, says Berners-Lee, is that we may need to re-adjust our ideas about privacy. "I think that we'll end up having to think about privacy from a different point of view," he said.

2. Accountability

Along the same lines of user privacy, is the idea that companies that want access to our critical information have a responsibility to build systems that respect that data. "Responsible" companies that are accountable for how they use our data are key. Clearly, this is a struggle many companies are dealing with now, and no one has a winning formula yet.

3. Neutrality

A perennial favorite topic for Berners-Lee is the idea of network neutrality, referring to regulations that forbid prioritizing the speed or access with which one company's data is available over another's. Companies that want you to use their services have an incentive to end neutrality for their own benefits - for example, those that provide voice services may want to slow down access to VoIP services.

Here Berners-Lee was the most passionate, saying point-blank that "the moment you let neutrality go, you lose the Web as it is - you lose the idea that you can click a link and go anywhere."

4. Bringing Web Access to the Rest of the World

The last point also involved a project in which Berners-Lee is involved: providing Web access to the 80% of the world that doesn't go online. He works on this issue through the foundation at webfoundation.org, which examines the challenges in this area. Surprisingly, lack of signal with which to log onto the Web is not the main thing holding back the spread of the Web. 80% of the world has access to the Web, but, for some reason, chooses not to use it.

The cost of data is partially to blame in many cases for this, and for those who cannot afford data plans through their carriers, they're limited to SMS for sharing information. But SMS is very constraining, says Berners-Lee. What's needed instead are better, more low-cost data plans for mobile phones. Carriers should want to offer these plans because once people get a taste of what a data plan can provide, they're potential customers for an upgrade to a more expensive plan that offers even more data and would generate more revenue for carriers.

Affordability of Web access is an area which Nokia thinks about when building their technologies. For example, Nokia's Ovi Maps service uses compression so as not to need data access when zooming in and out, unlike competing service from Google Maps. Nokia's messaging services also compress data and as, Mary McDowell, Nokia's EVP of Mobile Phones, mentioned in the keynote speech following Berners-Lee's, Nokia's recent acquisition of mobile Internet company Novarra was primarily for access to its proxy-browsing browser technology, which saves on clicks, while also providing faster and more efficient access to the Web. This is an important technology for emerging markets where data plans are pricey, but needed.

Disclosure: Nokia paid for this reporter's travel and accommodations to Nokia World 2010.

Vint Cerf was one of the key engineers in the development of the Internet, email and more. Since 2005 he has worked at Google as the company's Chief Internet Evangelist. This Spring Cerf gave a talk inside Google called Reimagining the Internet. His entire 80 minute talk is worth watching, but below we've excerpted the 10 minutes we expect would be most interesting to ReadWriteWeb readers. Think some of these ideas are crazy? Vint Cerf thinks they could be the future.

In the first clip below, Cerf tells a story about the sensor network he has set up in his house as an example of the expected wave of sensor data making up the Internet of Things. Where there is data, there is the potential for innovation in value-added services. This is a topic very close to our hearts here at ReadWriteWeb. If you're new to the concept, check out this very good intro video.

Next, Cerf discusses the Interplanetary Web, which is something I must confess I knew nothing about before watching this video. It's a long-running effort to get all the space-exploring countries in the world to adopt a space-capable communication standard that would turn spacecraft into communication beacons once they were otherwise decommissioned. It sounds pretty cool, and something Cerf himself is a leading spokesperson for.

Augmented Reality & Neural Interfaces

In the clip below, Cerf talks about ubiquitous connectivity, augmenting our sensory relationships with offline reality and neural/sensory interfaces with the Internet. Google brain implant? Not quite, but getting closer.

How does Cerf's vision of the future of the internet sound to you? What do you think he missed? We're excited to chronicle that emerging future here at ReadWriteWeb, and it's a special treat when one of the key players in building the present internet speaks about what he thinks the future will bring.

Social media? Oh, please. Some of these sessions are so 2009. How can you have any fun at SXSW this year if you can't see any real innovation.

If space shuttles, cyborgs and technological singularity are what make you bleep and bloop, you're going to love these ten events at SXSW Interactive 2010. At the very least you'll get to share beer with a few cool hardware hackers, learn more about lunar exploration or get involved with a crowdsourced science project.

Dorkbot

"Think of it as a science fair with free beer. Ample doses of electricity, tomfoolery, mayhem, makers and music combine to form one exquisite geek talent show. Sponsored by SXSW Interactive, the International Game Developer's Association of Austin, Mr. Data, Ricochet Labs and the Digital Media Council. "

A Touchy History of the Future

"We pinch it, tap it, shake it and poke it. We're so enthralled with finally getting to touch our products. But there's so much more to direct manipulation than just tapping it with our fingers! Let's explore some progressive interaction models that go beyond touch and into movement, infrared, wearable computing, sound and ambient data to really give us an idea of what our immersive interactive future may hold and how we might curate that future now."

And this wasn't the only session we found exploring futuristic interfaces! Check out Beyond Scifi: Design For Surfaces and Big Screens, No Touching! Truly Invisible Interfaces and That Game Feels Nice: Tomorrow's Touch Interfaces, too.

How SciFi Shapes the Internet

First things first, we look back in the past to see how our forward-thinking forbears imagined the future.

"What if Rod Serling had a blog? Would Alfred Hitchcock Tweet? These great producers and directors brought suspense and irony to the popular medium of the time; television. How did their work shape the minds of the young people of the time who would grow up to create 'our' Internet?"

Is the Brain the Ultimate Computer Interface?

"Will we be able to jack into the brain and upload helicopter instructions, like in The Matrix? We already have the technology to control a prosthetic arm or Twitter with thoughts alone. Dishes of neurons can control a robot. And scientists have created a working artificial memory chip in rats."

Moon 2.0: The Outer Limits of Lunar Exploration

"Space sector representatives will discuss how the use of web and mobile technologies create opportunities for participation in future exploration of the Moon. The panel focuses on how X PRIZE, NASA, commercial space companies, and others generate greater interaction and interest in Moon missions using collaborative platforms and social media."

Doing it Wrong: Recently Possible Technology

"Like ninjas battling on stage, Bre Pettis and Tal Chalzin will volley projects demonstrations back and forth. From guitar player robots to machines that vomit plastic skulls, the presentation will include a mix of projects they've worked on and that have been worked on at the GarageGeeks, NYCResistor and beyond. This presentation will both thrill and repulse you with the possibilities that have recently emerged in the DIY hacker technology space."

Museum of Digital Art Showcase

"The Austin Museum of Digital Art presents a party featuring live electronic music and visual art. Expect video projections, interactive installations, and a Laptop Battle with musicians competing to outperform one another in a series of elimination rounds. Free for SXSW Interactive badgeholders."

Here Are Lions: The Cartography of the Future

"A new breed of maps is revealing breakthroughs in our understanding of biology, neuroscience, ecology and the physical world. We can now map not just physical geographies, but also genomes, neural pathways, emotions, social networks and ideas. These new maps reveal how society will change over the next twenty years."

Open Science: Create, Collaborate, Communicate

"From discovering galaxies to folding proteins: how to actively contribute to science. Science projects are harnessing open collaboration to further discovery and exploration. As a result, citizen science is witnessing a renaissance. The panel will discuss how you can get involved and challenges faced in making science open." With Spacehack's Ariel Waldman.

Zero Waste: The Future of Green

"Innovation, global warming, and green technology are all pushing in the same direction: zero waste. This concept is in practice in several cities (including Austin) and will soon be in yours. Learn about the current, future, and upcoming needs of this movement and how technology is playing a vital role."

Those are our SXSW Interaction recommendations for futurists of all stripes. If you've got suggestions or feedback, let us know in the comments! See you in Austin, folks!

Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!

The eight technologies identified include the following:

Bluetooth 3.0

This is one of the no-brainers on the list. The Bluetooth 3.0 specification will be released this year and devices will start to hit the shelves by 2010. At this point, it's expected that the 3.0 spec will include faster speeds, reportedly transferring files at 480 megabits per second in close proximity and 100 megabits per second at 10 meters. It will also feature an ultra-low-power mode that Gartner predicts will enable new peripherals, sensors, and applications, such as health monitoring. The technology will be backwards compatible, allowing old devices to communicate with new ones, so there's no reason for it not take off in the upcoming years.

Mobile User Interfaces + Mobile Web/Widgets

Mobile user interfaces and mobile web/widgets were listed separately, accounting for two items on the list, but we think they can be lumped together. They all point to how mobile computing is rapidly becoming a new platform for everything from consumer mobile apps to B2E (business-to-employee) and B2C (business-to-customer). (Gartner did not include B2B on their list.) Modern day smartphones like the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, the upcoming Pre, and others deliver better interfaces for browsing the web, thus making it accessible to more people. Widget-like applications, including those that replicate thin client technology, will become more common especially in B2C strategies. Yet the mobile web still has challenges ahead. For example, there are no standards for browser access to handset services like the camera or GPS, the report notes.

Location Awareness

Location sensing, powered by GPS as well as Wi-Fi and triangulation, opens up new possibilities for mobile social networking and presence applications. Technology's earliest adopters are already familiar with social networks like Brightkite and Loopt which let you reveal your location to a network of friends. But we're still on the tip of this iceberg. Take for example, the iPhone IM client Palringo, they're just now adding location services to their application. This allows users to see how far away their contacts are, introducing a whole new dimension to mobile communication. Over the next year or two, this sort of technology is expected to become more commonplace, but it will also raise questions about privacy. Will you want your network of online friends and acquaintances to really know your exact location? Will turning off location awareness signal that you're up to something sneaky (so asks the suspicious wife, husband, boss, etc.)? As a society, we will have to answer these questions and more in the near future.

Near Field Communication (NFC)

NFC is a technology that provides a way for consumers to use their mobile phones for making payments, among other things. It's something that has taken off in many countries worldwide, but certainly not all, and definitely not in the United States just yet. Unfortunately, Gartner predicts that the move towards mobile payment systems will still not occur this year or the next in mature markets like the U.S. and Western Europe. Instead, NFC is more likely to take off in emerging markets. Other uses of the technology, such as the ability to transfer photos from phone to digital photo frames, will also remain elusive to more developed markets.

802.11n & Cellular Broadband

802.11n, a specification for wireless local area networks (WLANs), initially gave us pause. Although not ratified as an official standard yet, the technology is already commonplace. However, until it "goes gold" so to speak, it won't really infiltrate the mobile world. Even the ubiquitous iPhone only supports 802.11 b/g at the moment. 

On the flip side, the other Internet connection technology, cellular broadband, has the potential to make Wi-Fi almost unnecessary, at least for achieving high speeds. In addition to mobile phones, laptop makers will likely continue to incorporate this technology into their netbooks and notebooks using modern chipsets that provide superior performance to our current crop of add-on cards and dongles.

Display Technologies

Display technologies will also see improvements in the upcoming years. New technologies like active pixel displays, passive displays and pico projectors will have an impact. Pico projectors - the tiny portable projectors we saw being introduced at this year's CES - will enable new mobile use cases. Instant presentations in informal settings could become more common when there isn't large, cumbersome equipment to set up. The different types of display technologies introduced in 2009 and 2010 will become important differentiators between devices and will impact user selection criterion, says Gartner.

For more information on these above technologies, you can read through the full report available here on Gartner's web site.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments on how you think the mobile space will be impacted in the future.

Gartner is the largest and most respected analyst firm in the world and much of what Schmidt said in his 45 minute interview was directed specifically at business leaders, but we've excerpted 6 minutes that we believe is of interest to anyone who's touched by the web.

Highlighted comments include:

• Five years from now the internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content.
• Today's teenagers are the model of how the web will work in five years - they jump from app to app to app seamlessly.
• Five years is a factor of ten in Moore's Law, meaning that computers will be capable of far more by that time than they are today.
• Within five years there will be broadband well above 100MB in performance - and distribution distinctions between TV, radio and the web will go away.
• "We're starting to make significant money off of Youtube", content will move towards more video.

• "Real time information is just as valuable as all the other information, we want it included in our search results."
• There are many companies beyond Twitter and Facebook doing real time.
• "We can index real-time info now - but how do we rank it?"
• It's because of this fundamental shift towards user-generated information that people will listen more to other people than to traditional sources. Learning how to rank that "is the great challenge of the age." Schmidt believes Google can solve that problem.

There's lots more in the full 45 minutes of Schmidt's interview, including a statement that a Google OS Netbook will be here in 2010, with HTML5 local caching for offline use.

That's the roadmap, though, that's guiding much of what Google is doing today. From Chrome OS to Google Social Search.

Does that sound like a compelling vision of the future? Not discussed were distributed social networking, structured data, recommendations, presence data and other factors that could complicate Google's plans. What do you think the web will look like in five years?

See Also: ReadWriteWeb's Top Trends Defining the Future of the Internet

In the company's latest report (sample) "Mobile Broadband Traffic Across Regions 2009-2017," they've determined that this increase will account for nearly three quarters of all global traffic via mobile broadband portables. The top region for video consumption will be Asia Pacific which will account for over half (53%) of the traffic. That will be followed by Europe (26%) and then North America (14%).

The reason why Asia Pacific comes in so high is because, in many countries, mobile broadband is often the sole option for internet connectivity. Another forecast states that two-thirds of the global traffic will be via LTE (Long Term Evolution), a 4G wireless technology, where Asia Pacific will consume just under half (45%) of LTE traffic. In Europe, 80% of traffic will be LTE-based and in North America, 75%.

It Will Get Worse Before it Gets Better

According to Steve Smith, founder of Coda Research Consultancy, "the sheer amount of traffic people will consume worldwide will put pressure on operator revenues and network capacity, necessitating radical efficiency drives." He also notes that, in the short term, end user frustration with bandwidth and speed will increase. To illustrate this point, he mentions that today as many as three-quarters of Europeans are dissatisfied with the speeds they currently receive. That's an interesting comment, especially considering all the grumbling we hear about AT&T in the U.S. and their general failure to deliver on the promise of high-speed internet for iPhone users. (In many urban areas, they can't even consistently deliver a signal!) Although this report didn't focus specifically on smartphones, it's somewhat comforting to know that overseas users are experiencing the same struggles as we do here in the U.S.

However, once mobile broadband operators complete their build-outs and upgrades to this high-speed data network of the future, the resulting impact it will have on the internet as a whole will be mind-blowing. One could even argue that bandwidth speeds have accounted for many of the major revolutions the internet has seen over time - since the invention of the hypertext protocol and the web browser, that is.

The Next Revolution for the Net: Extremely Fast, Lots of Bandwidth

In the early days, slow dial-up speeds left us with simplistic, HTML-coded web pages where the most action to be had was an animated GIF. As bandwidth and speeds increased, pages became more robust, too. This change led to sites like Amazon and eBay, both of which launched in 1995, allowing people to shop from home using their PCs. By 2001, the usefulness of the net encouraged enough people to come online to make sites like the crowd-sourced Wikipedia possible. By 2003, the still-increasing speeds meant users could now download music from the newly launched iTunes store, customize (and overload!) their online profiles on MySpace, and play in online virtual worlds like Second Life. The following year, online photo-sharing prepared to go mainstream thanks to the launch of Flickr. Facebook, too, launched this year and eventually became the largest photo-sharing site in the world only three years later when they announced how they hosted over 10 billion photos on their site.

Also in 2005, the abundance of high-speed data connections made video-sharing site YouTube a hit among a new generation of user-generated content producers. By 2007, broadcasters banded together to launch Hulu, a video-streaming site for commercial content in an effort to compete with pirated peer-to-peer downloads as well as iTunes, which by now was serving up TV shows and full-length movies. In Europe, the BBC iPlayer was doing much of the same. In 2008, the launch of the 3G iPhone brought the high-speed internet to the handheld and revolutionized the mobile phone industry. This year, the handset's hardware was upgraded to record video, too.

As you can see, many of these changes were either directly or indirectly impacted by the increasing speeds and bandwidth provided by both mobile operators and ISPs. But currently, it's the mobile broadband networks which are having more of an impact on the latest trends. Even with all their struggles (cough AT&T cough), without the bandwidth provided, phones like the iPhone wouldn't even be possible and the smartphone revolution wouldn't be underway as it is now.

So what will the world look like by 2017? It's almost hard to imagine. But the promise of 4G could deliver things like live streaming HDTV, real-time updates from a variety of services, video chat, abundant use of MiFi, mobile cloud computing, streaming via iTunes instead of downloading (we like that!), and much more. In other words, the high-speed net that you use at home could go with you everywhere via your netbook, tablet, smartphone, or some other device in between. What will that mean for the world of online applications and cloud computing? Only that the next big shift for the internet as a whole is underway and we're privileged to be watching it happen now.

Steve Jurvetson, one of the best-known technology investors in the world, has posted an updated version of Kurzweil's visualization of the history of exponential growth in computing. In his thought provoking discussion of the phenomenon, Jurvetson calls this "the most important chart in technology business."

"What Moore observed in the belly of the early IC [integrated circuit] industry was a derivative metric," Jurvetson writes, "a refracted signal, from the bigger trend, the trend that begs various philosophical questions and predicts mind-bending futures."

What will be the next big leap in computing technology? From a hardware perspective I won't even venture to guess, but it sure is exciting to think about what those technologies will enable. Many things we'd love to see done today remain too processor intensive, from advanced Augmented Reality implementations to broader real time services and machine learning. Ultimately, we can only make clumsy guesses about the killer apps of an exponentially more powerful computing platform - that's the point.

When calculations per second increase exponentially, fundamentally new things become possible. It's one of those fascinating quantitative changes that cross the threshold of creating qualitative change.

For every frontier explored there is baggage brought from home, of course. About this chart, Union Square Ventures associate Andrew Parker asks "how much does a newer medium pull from an older medium in terms of design paradigms?" (That makes us want to cry for the poor limping US Patent Office, now facing layoffs of all things!)

Mind bending is right. What does this chart, that Jurvetson calls the most important in the technology business, bring to your mind - innovation loving readers of ReadWriteWeb?

But what in this future scenario will Social Network XYZ be? As the sands of time wash MySpace into obscurity, with a wave of hundreds of employees being let go this week for example, now seems like a good time to think about what comes next. What could kill Facebook, the MySpace killer? We've identified four possible scenarios - which do you think is most likely? Most desirable?

Scenario 1: Incremental Change

In some ways, Facebook was just a series of incremental changes away from what MySpace offered. The same core functionality of messaging, media storage and personal expression is consistent across both sites - Facebook just purports to be classier, it's more about school friends than music and it came along at a time when being online was more universal than it was in the days of MySpace's rule. Perhaps another social network will challenge Facebook simply by making small changes in response to the most annoying things about Facebook. Perhaps they will more effectively deal with app spam and they will make preservation of privacy easier. It's about to get a whole lot harder at Facebook, if you believe Michael Arrington's report that Facebook status messages will soon be publicly visible by default. Facebook's privacy settings are already so labyrinthine that company watch-dog blogger Nick O'Neill's post on changing the settings has been viewed by millions of people and he's now selling a book on the topic.

Perhaps a challenger will make incremental changes to these kinds of policies and steal Facebook's thunder.

Scenario 2: A Smarter Technology

Facebook's technology is very smart already, but it could be a whole lot smarter. The future of social networking may come in the form of more sophisticated recommendations. If you liked this video that your friend just shared, then you might also like these other videos, these groups and these public figures to follow.

The Facebook news feed keeps users engaged by following the progress of their friends' lives - but most peoples' friends have pretty boring lives. The flow of information we get from our social networks could be spiced up a whole lot with smarter recommendation systems.

Unfortunately Facebook is moving away from the kind of rich user profiles and connections that sophisticated recommendations are built on. The company is removing geographic regional networks and no longer prompts users to note how they met the people they connect with on Facebook. (Its executives also speak to their users like children, in big vague terms like "we help you Connect.")

The future crown of social networking could be stolen by a system that offers users powerful features, options and recommendations. Think of how television is moving towards increased complexity of features and imagine social networking going that way as well.

Scenario 3: Augmented Reality

Augmented reality is one of those new buzz words that is going to get old fast, but the user experience is not. Social networking as a layer on top of real world experiences has a lot of potential to capture peoples' imaginations. Systems like Loopt and FourSquare are already catching on.

Why would I want to leave my network at home on my desktop when I could bring it with me and detect a residue of restaurant reviews written by my friends, wherever I go around town. Is this place I'm in just a fountain in the park, or can I click a button on my phone and see pictures of my friends smiling there in the past, read a short history of when it was built and leave messages for friends who come there in the future? On second thought, if you thought information overload was an issue today, an augmented future like that could drive us all even more insane.

Scenario 4: Distributed Social Networking

Imagine being an AT&T customer and being unable to call T-Mobile customers on your phone. Imagine being afraid to leave your phone provider because you'd lose your friends' numbers you'd stored and the photos you'd taken. (Heck, imagine having a great phone but being unable to use it on another network! But that's another story...)

That's where we're at with social networking today. They are essentially "walled gardens" little different from the old AOL days.

Talking Social Network Interop @ GSP East from Brian Oberkirch on Vimeo.

The next step after Facebook may be no social network in particular at all - it may be social networking as a protocol. A set of standards that let you message, share with and travel to any social network you choose. Suddenly all the social networks have to improve because they are competing on quality of service, over customers that have free will and are able to leave at any time. Someone might even build an interoperable social networking service so compelling that you'd be willing to pay for it, instead of being served up ads.

This is probably the most radical vision, the riskiest when it comes to making money, and so the least likely to happen. But it sure does sound interesting.

What do you think the future of social networking is going to look like? Facebook can't rule the world forever. No one can. The marketplace and the internet are all about churn, innovation and cycles. Just like MySpace has fallen from the top, someday Facebook will too. What do you want to see come next?

Bluetooth 3.0

This is one of the no-brainers on the list. The Bluetooth 3.0 specification will be released this year and devices will start to hit the shelves by 2010. At this point, it's expected that the 3.0 spec will include faster speeds, reportedly transferring files at 480 megabits per second in close proximity and 100 megabits per second at 10 meters. It will also feature an ultra-low-power mode that Gartner predicts will enable new peripherals, sensors, and applications, such as health monitoring. The technology will be backwards compatible, allowing old devices to communicate with new ones, so there's no reason for it not take off in the upcoming years.

Mobile User Interfaces + Mobile Web/Widgets

Mobile user interfaces and mobile web/widgets were listed separately, accounting for two items on the list, but we think they can be lumped together. They all point to how mobile computing is rapidly becoming a new platform for everything from consumer mobile apps to B2E (business-to-employee) and B2C (business-to-customer). (Gartner did not include B2B on their list.) Modern day smartphones like the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, the upcoming Pre, and others deliver better interfaces for browsing the web, thus making it accessible to more people. Widget-like applications, including those that replicate thin client technology, will become more common especially in B2C strategies. Yet the mobile web still has challenges ahead. For example, there are no standards for browser access to handset services like the camera or GPS, the report notes.

Location Awareness

Location sensing, powered by GPS as well as Wi-Fi and triangulation, opens up new possibilities for mobile social networking and presence applications. Technology's earliest adopters are already familiar with social networks like Brightkite and Loopt which let you reveal your location to a network of friends. But we're still on the tip of this iceberg. Take for example, the iPhone IM client Palringo, they're just now adding location services to their application. This allows users to see how far away their contacts are, introducing a whole new dimension to mobile communication. Over the next year or two, this sort of technology is expected to become more commonplace, but it will also raise questions about privacy. Will you want your network of online friends and acquaintances to really know your exact location? Will turning off location awareness signal that you're up to something sneaky (so asks the suspicious wife, husband, boss, etc.)? As a society, we will have to answer these questions and more in the near future.

Near Field Communication (NFC)

NFC is a technology that provides a way for consumers to use their mobile phones for making payments, among other things. It's something that has taken off in many countries worldwide, but certainly not all, and definitely not in the United States just yet. Unfortunately, Gartner predicts that the move towards mobile payment systems will still not occur this year or the next in mature markets like the U.S. and Western Europe. Instead, NFC is more likely to take off in emerging markets. Other uses of the technology, such as the ability to transfer photos from phone to digital photo frames, will also remain elusive to more developed markets.

802.11n & Cellular Broadband

802.11n, a specification for wireless local area networks (WLANs), initially gave us pause. Although not ratified as an official standard yet, the technology is already commonplace. However, until it "goes gold" so to speak, it won't really infiltrate the mobile world. Even the ubiquitous iPhone only supports 802.11 b/g at the moment. 

On the flip side, the other internet connection technology, cellular broadband, has the potential to make Wi-Fi almost unnecessary, at least for achieving high speeds. In addition to mobile phones, laptop makers will likely continue to incorporate this technology into their netbooks and notebooks using modern chipsets that provide superior performance to our current crop of add-on cards and dongles.

Display Technologies

Display technologies will also see improvements in the upcoming years. New technologies like active pixel displays, passive displays and pico projectors will have an impact. Pico projectors - the tiny portable projectors we saw being introduced at this year's CES - will enable new mobile use cases. Instant presentations in informal settings could become more common when there isn't large, cumbersome equipment to set up. The different types of display technologies introduced in 2009 and 2010 will become important differentiators between devices and will impact user selection criterion, says Gartner.

For more information on these above technologies, you can read through the full report available here on Gartner's web site.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments on how you think the mobile space will be impacted in the future.