Think your favorite gadgets--GPS, media player, camera--and now reimagine them with wireless cellular connectivity. You can then browse for restaurants on your GPS navigator or upload pictures directly from the camera to Flickr anytime, anywhere. Telecom services provider Sprint is hoping to make that possible by offering excess capacity on its cellular network available to gadget makers, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
"Sprint understands that we are getting to a point where almost every digital device would want to be connected to a fast ubiquitous network," says Michael Gartenberg, vice president of strategy for Los Angeles based analytics firm Interpret. "Wi-Fi isn't everywhere and consumers want the assurance of ubiquitous connectivity that wide area networks can offer."
Sprint has already taken the first step towards this model through its partnership with Amazon. Amazon kicked off the first version of its e-book reader Kindle with Sprint's wireless connectivity to help users download e-books over the air. In its latest version, Kindle allows users basic web surfing using Sprint's network without paying any additional data access charges.
This kind of unobtrusive wireless capability is something other gadget makers are likely to jump at. Sprint is already in talks with Garmin, SanDisk and Eastman Kodak, says WSJ.
"More and more we are going to see this become attractive to all sorts of vendors, especially if they can integrate it at a low cost," says Gartenberg.
Source : http://blog.wired.com
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