The future of Media on Smart Phones

The last few years have seen an exponential growth in storage capacity, not just in smart phones, but in the electronics & computer industry in general. Storage has become so cheap and plentiful it feels as though we will soon reach the point of having so much space the thought of running out would be laughable. This is certainly the case with the modern computer. With 1 Terabyte hard drives selling for well under $100, storage is now cheap.
Will the same be true of Smart Phones? The newest iPhone can now hold 32gb, up from the 16gb model which preceded it, and before that was 8gb and even earlier was a meager 4gb. But is all this storage space really needed on smart phones? At first glance the answer would appear to be “sure, why not” if computers need lots of space, and smart phones are becoming min computers, they too need lots of storage space.
I want to suggest however, that they don’t need all that space. The reason, one word, streaming. With smart phones constantly being connected to the internet there is no need to store media locally? AT&T has HSUDPA, Verizon & Sprint have EVDO, and T-Mobile will get their act together eventually. High speed internet on smart phones is becoming ubiquitous. Just as the cable internet age lead to a boom in online streaming websites (Hulu, Netflix, etc…) the same will be true of the 3G age for cell phones.
Pandora already lets users stream music to pretty much any smart phone platform. And there are applications for the iPhone which allows users to access their own personal music connection over 3G. Finally, Apple is scheduled to update MobileMe with the ability to stream any content over 3G. That means you can watch your favorite movies, listen to your favorite songs, view all your pictures, and even watch porn remotely from your smart phone.
Why cram more storage into a smart phone when all it does is increase its size and cost? Just let your computer at home do all the work for you. You can have all the terabytes of storage at your house, loaded up with all your favorite movies. Then you can have your cheap and nimble smart phone stream whatever you want.
That’s the way I see it at least. I’m sure smart phone storage capacity will increase regardless. As flash memory gets cheaper, every manufacturer will cram as much of it into their phones as possible, it’s just the arms race that is the modern day smart phone industry. But my point is that it’s not really needed. That’s why I bought my 3GS in 16gb flavor instead of the more expensive 32gb variety.