A hot startup with some major engineering talent may change the face of mobile data speeds, surpassing 4G altogether.

pCell technology (created by Artemis), is based on the collision of radio waves emitted from several small pWave base stations. By combining the incoming signals from several of the pWave base stations, each pCell user is given the equivalent of their own “personal cell” (hence the name). This will mean that getting full bars of LTE at all times becomes the new standard, while “good” signal strength means getting a signal that’s as much as 1,000 times faster than what we’re all used to.

pCell would also bring a significant reduction in the amount of infrastructure required by making cell towers obsolete.

In light of exciting new technologies like pCell, digital designers need to pay even more attention to mobile users.

Here are some more statistics that add fuel to the fire:

– There are over 1.2 billion mobile web users worldwide
– In the U.S., 25% of mobile Web users are mobile-only (they rarely use a desktop to access the web)
– Mobile apps have been downloaded 10.9 billion times
– Mobile device sales are increasing across the board with over 85 percent of new handsets able to access the mobile Web

Digital web/app development and technological advances in hardware are inextricably tied together. We need to closely follow the way that users interact with their devices so that we can remain relevant in the present, and imaginative for the future.

This isn’t to say that we should forget about desktop users altogether, in fact far from it. We just need to evolve our methodologies so that we can visualise the full picture clearly.

Just how we do this is something to discuss in another blog.