Apple acquired Palo Alto Semi-conductor last year, a microchip design firm that boasted some impressive talent and experience. Now they picked up Bob Drebin and Raja Koduri, both former chief technology officers with Advanced Micro Design’s graphic products group.

Many analysts predict Apple is designing its own chips for future iPhones or other low-powered computing devices.  But I have my own “off-the-wall” prediction.

Apple is ahead of the game when it comes to cell phones and music players, but everyone else is catching up in a hurry. The practical touch screen and Apple’s attention to usability was their first paradigm shift in consumer electronics.  The next paradigm shift: cell phone information gathering and information augmentation.  What does that mean?

Imagine these scenarios:

Scenario 1: You are shopping at a big box retailer. You see a product you are interested in, grab your iPhone, open up iShop, and take a pic of the barcode. Instantly, you have all the statistics, reviews, and competitive prices for that product and you can make the best decision.  Nothing too ground-breaking there, right?

Scenario 2 is where custom graphics processors comes in: you are walking down the street and see a new model of car and want to know about it.  You pull out your trusty iPhone 5.0, click on your iInfo program, point the integrated dual cameras at the car, and snap an image.  Your iPhone creates a 3D model of your environment using newly developed Ray-Tracing technology, isolates the object you selected, creates a digital signature of the object, and then contacts Apple’s InfoGenius to get all the statistics that you could possibly want about the car (or about anything or anyone you could take a picture of.)

The iPhone is already a capable communications device, media device, as well as entertainment and gaming platform. But it is not a particularly good platform for ad hoc information gathering.  (Ever tried using mobile Safari to get reviews while shopping?) This might be a pipe dream, but down the road your iPhone might become your digital sixth sense.

[via Reuters]

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