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The divide between the PC and the smartphone has narrowed, a Verizon exec has said.
Humphrey Chen, director of new technology development at US mobile network giant Verizon Wireless, used the stage at the Mobilebeat 2010 conference to illustrate the huge investment the company had placed in next-generation mobile network technology known as 4G.
However Chen saved the most controversial comments relating to the role of the smartphone versus the traditional PC. Pointing out that rapidly improving hardware specifications such as gigahert-speed processors had narrowed the divide between smartphones and PCs.
"That’s Microsoft’s worst nightmare because there is no Windows or Office revenue, but there’s a big Google Apps and Verizon cloud computing opportunity there," said Chen.
Chen also raised the possibility of offering separate business and personal "clients" on the same smartphones to keep the usages separate, possibly using virtualisation technology. Such comments are likely to raise interest from the corporate sector which has long struggled with the conflict of responsibility in business networks versus personal communication.
Photo credit: EE Times.
