There’s an interesting article on Business Week about Smartphone Software and the way new developments are making inroads into gaining more and more adoption amongst users. The reality is that this is still an emerging market, but one that is expecting to grow enormously in the future. There are a couple of really interesting examples of the technology on the article; one centring about a shopping experience. It talks about a smartphone being used to track a person’s shopping – scanning her items as she picks them off the shelf. This information is used at checkout to bill the customer, but it also provides valuable information about shopping patterns and location in the store. The customer is rewarded with coupons that match her shopping patterns, whether it’s for cheese or weight loss pills, it all depends on her purchases. It’s an interesting model with both parties gaining from it, a synergy that produces some interesting result.

The technology that makes this possible is the inclusion of devices in phones that makes them context aware. My phone for example, has GPS, a compass, motion sensors and other sensors that tell the phone where it is and what it’s doing. However, the applications that can use this platform are still in their infancy. Every month, new applications are produced that take advantage of this technology and over the next few years, we’ll see some amazing innovations in this sphere.

I personally, just can’t wait to see what’s around the corner 😉