Tero Ojanpera, who takes over as chief strategy officer from January 1, 2005 to oversee Finnish giant Nokia's research and development, speaks about the future direction of mobile phone technology and the challenges in the Indian market.

Excerpts from an interview during his short visit to New Delhi recently.

The buzz now is 'smart' phones. How do you define them and what will be the killer applications on them?

Smart phones should substitute the laptop within a mobile environment. The key is to bring about a lot of computing power in a portable device with an easy programmable interface.

The connectivity part has to be seamlessly integrated so you do need a cradle.

You have to design products that you don't have to charge every second hour like you have to do with a Pocket PC.

Smart phones are in a very early stage of development, but it is a disruptive technology that will lead to a shift from the traditional PC paradigm in the next five years.

At the moment, I don't think you can predict what the big application, which will drive smart phones, will be -- our job is to build the platform and let the programmers develop the market.

Here, countries like India, which are a software powerhouse, have a big opportunity.

But do you think that the size of the phone (the limited size of the display) will be an impediment for the mobile phone to substitute the laptop or the PC?

This may sound like science fiction but there is nothing stopping phones having a projection display -- where the beams will be sent from the phone to be projected on another surface.

There are actually prototypes already in the marketplace and a Finnish university has been working in this area for years.

The limitation of the phone factor might be in our minds. I think these technologies will be commercially available in the next five-10 years.

You can also have large screen display eye glasses (Sony already has a product for TV), which can be incorporated on mobile phones. Remember, earlier PCs used to be grey but Apple created a stir by selling PCs in different colours.

What is the direction of research and development in mobile phones that  we can see in the next few years?

I think a key area is Internet -- at the moment we are actually only browsing the net on the phone. But the next big thing will be that the mobile phone will have the capability to become the node for the internet and not only an access device.

You will be able to store information in the phone that might be crucial for somebody, others can use the IP network to access your node if you have given it the rights to pick up information stored on it.

The phone to some extent will become like a server and this will lead to a range of new services.

With pressure to reduce prices becoming intense with increased competition, are you working on an innovation to reduce costs?

The key is printed electronics in which the board as well as the components are printed on a board. It is still in a research stage but we are working on it. This will reduce costs substantially.

What are the challenges in the Indian market?

India is a sophisticated and demanding market from the applications point of view. Our R&D team has been going to villages to learn about their requirements.