Nokia CEO says 6G will arrive by 2030 and AR glasses will outpace phone

Pekka Lundmark, CEO of Nokia, expects 6G mobile networks to be operational by the end of the decade, but he doesn’t think the smartphone will be the “most popular interface” by then.

Lundmark, speaking to a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday, said he expects 6G to reach the commercial market by 2030.

Headquartered in Finland, Nokia builds communications networks that enable phones and other Internet-enabled devices to communicate with each other.

When asked when he thinks the world will transition away from using smartphones to using smart glasses and other face-worn devices, Lundmark said this will happen before 6G arrives.

“By then, the smartphone as we know it today will certainly not be the most popular interface,” he said. “A lot of this stuff will be built directly into our bodies.”

He didn’t specify exactly what he was referring to but some companies, like Elon Musk’s Neuralink, are working on pProduction of electronic devices that can be implanted in the brain They are used to communicate with machines and other people. On a more basic level, chips can be implanted into people’s fingers and used to unlock things.

Elsewhere, American tech giants like deadAnd The Google And Microsoft She’s working on a new augmented reality headset that could one day replace the smartphone.

“We believe that one of the big advantages of AR is actually solving problems here on Earth,” said Ruth Porat, Google’s chief financial officer, speaking on the same panel.

“It’s going to be things like wearing glasses and being able to translate while talking with glasses,” she added. “They are very close.”

Google previously launched an AR headset called Google Glass but eventually pulled it off after the device failed to gain traction.

Technology leaders also discussed the opportunities and challenges posed by the metaverse.

Lundmark said he believes that by 2030 there will be a “digital twin of everything” that will require “huge computational resources”.

In order to transmit all the computer hardware required by the metaverse, Lundmark said, networks would have to be at least 100 times or even 1,000 times faster than they are today.