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Eye or wrist? Where to next?

First we had the laptop.

This luggable device was the epitome of power for the highly mobile executive or "trendy young thing".

With a laptop in your briefcase you could sit down and whip out a raft of cool stuff with which to dazzle your friends and bystanders.

Flashy business graphics, animated games, videos -- you name it and the humble laptop could (with some difficulty on older units) deliver the goods.

But laptops were big and heavy. They suffered from significant form-factor limitations and, unless you had WiFi or a cellular modem nearby, they were an island of disconnection from the rest of the world.

Of course cellphones were out there too - but they were pretty basic devices that mostly just handled voice calls and SMS.

I'm talking about the pre-smartphone era here.

However, the relentless march of technology ended up delivering a powerful computer and wireless communicator in a single package -- the ubiquitous smartphone had arrived and now we could wow our friends with a pocket-sized bit of hi-techery.

At last it was possible to do virtually all of that laptop-stuff on your phone, and more to boot.

So the Smartphone has become a "must have" and, since the release of the iPhone and Galaxy variants, it has also become a style/fashion accessory. There are plenty of folk out there who like to be judged and judge others on the basis of what brand/model of phone they carry.

But where to from here?

Well Google seems to be sure that the smartphone isn't dead yet.

It has just announced that, in the wake of its acquisition of Motorola, a new phone called the MotoX will be released in the 3rd quarter of this year.

With the backing of Google and the tech-savvy of Motorola, it looks as if the MotoX could be a strong competitor to the Apple and Samsung offerings, effectively making for a three-way race.

But is the smartphone about to go the way of the laptop?

Might Apple be, yet again, one jump ahead of its competition?

I'm talking about the long rumoured iWatch of course. Might it be that Apple's response to growing competition in the smartphone market will be to redirect the direction of personal communications from the pocket to the wrist?

Even Google itself is obviously aware that the days of the smartphone may be over, as can be seen by the amount of effort it's applying to the development and promotion of its "Glass" product.

So, perhaps in 12 months time it will be a race which sees some major divergence in direction.

Apple may take to the wrist, Google to the eye and Samsung... well we don't know where they're headed yet. Perhaps Samsung will opt for a "steady as she goes" course and hope that the Smartphone market won't be too affected by these new attempts by its competitors to create new trends and fashions.

Gosh, I must be getting old, my (non-smart) mobile phone barely handles SMS properly and hasn't got enough computing power to pull the skin off a cyber-rice pudding.

Any readers care to take a punt and suggest where the "smart" trend will head and which part of the body it will attach to?

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