Smartphone tech key to businesses of future: Expert

Muscat: Smartphones are likely to replace computers and laptops as people’s primary stations of work in the next 10 years, a leading educator and tech entrepreneur has said.
Tariq Al Barwani, the founder and CEO of Knowledge Oman, which aims to train youth by giving them the skills to thrive in the workplace, will be speaking at Telecom Innovation Oman 2018 on December 17 and 18, where he will be the keynote speaker.
“I think it is safe to say that in the next 10 years, given the advances that we have seen in smartphone technology over the last decade, smartphones will replace laptops and desktops as platforms that we do most of our work on, because phones have evolved so much,” he told Times of Oman.
“For example, when you call someone up, that is only one of the functions of the phone. Today, you can use it to send emails, edit videos, make presentations; so there is so much value to phones and tablets and this will only increase in the future."
“This event will talk about the advantages of smartphone technology in the world of the future, whether you look at smart cities, the way we interact, the internet of things (IoT), and it will also show the youth in Oman how to harness the power of smartphone technology to set up their own businesses and improve on already existing businesses,” he added.
Al Barwani's talk will capture the importance of digital transformation for Omani youth and why it is important for the youth to understand the related technologies that will change the landscape of communications and business. His aim is to demonstrate an understanding of how technology can be harnessed for one to scale the heights of success, summarising the ways the youth can take advantage of working within the private or government sector including leading their own enterprises as digital entrepreneurs.
The two-day event will focus on Oman’s National Development Agenda, current position and development initiatives with regards to the 4th Industrial Revolution, digital transformation, 5G mobile technology, AI and innovation, IoT, smart cities, social media impact, gaming and virtual reality, cyber security, e-government and development of ICT SMEs, and Al Barwani has said that going forward, companies will need to embrace the technological space.
“I can understand when there are some, especially among the older generation, who may not be familiar with the aspects of the internet and technology today, but they are missing out,” he said.
“For example if you go to social media, you get so much news from there because that is where you get a lot of information in one place, and you might miss out on that because you are not part of it. Change is never easy, but we need to adapt, and the same holds good for companies as well,” added Al Barwani.
“The youth of today are extremely tech-savvy and technologically literate, and it is likely that the innovations that come in the future will be those that incorporate this technology, so I would advise people to embrace and learn this. Today, all of us are connected through technology, whether it is simple things such as WhatsApp or Facebook which many of us use for work or for convenience at home because today you have devices such as Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, so this is the way forward, and for many, it would be hard to imagine a world without this.”