Live from the Summit: Battery life, carriers key to development of mobile-device applications

Most panelists addressed high technology and rampant innovation during the DLA Piper Global Technology Leaders Summit. Among the notable revelations, however, were the bearish attitudes toward battery life on mobile devices.

Power efficiency is among the key challenges in producing mobile applications, but panelists were not confident that mobile users will see dramatic increases in power capacity anytime soon. Some of the strongest selling points of mobile devices – screen size, picture clarity, and access to wireless networks – also play a role in shortening battery life.

Panelists noted innovators can make progress by improving chip performance and developing new display technologies, but reinforced that the upside might be minimal.

The panel also noted conflicting incentives between carriers and advertisers, with retailers supporting a push toward geo-tagging consumers in order to better target potential customers. The cooperation of wireless carriers would be instrumental in this movement.

Carriers also profit heavily from the SMS technology that is being replaced by the messaging capabilities of social networks. Although many of these networks offer SMS capabilities themselves, developers are creating small applications on open mobile platforms, eliminating the need for users to direct social-network messages to their mobile via SMS. This might represent a threat to carriers’ SMS profits.

Ideally, connectedness will be a non-issue in the future, noted one panelist: “Pretty soon, we will just expect the Internet to be around us,” so security and interoperability will become increasingly important.