'Holy Grail' on Your Hip: The Must-Have Product of Tomorrow

Oct. 17, 2006 — -- If you could have just one thing -- one portable, electronic gizmo that could fit in your pocket or your purse -- what would it be?

Would it play music? Would you use it to make calls, surf the Web, message friends, play games?

"To me, the holy grail product is something that does wireless connectivity really well, something that takes great pictures so I don't have to lug a digital camera around, and something that's a great music player," says Mark McClusky, product editor for Wired Magazine.

Ask different people and you'll get different answers, but one thing's for sure: The gadget needs to be small, easy to use and cheap.

Though there are products on the market that can do a couple of things well -- like cell phones that let you take pictures or browse the Web -- there still isn't one tool that can do it all. If you want to get an idea of what the "it" product of tomorrow can do, you have to look deep into the proverbial crystal ball -- batteries not included.

Take a bus ride in any major city in the United States these days and you'll likely notice the sagging pants and drooping drawers of commuters weighed down by cell phones, iPods, PDAs and other electronic gadgets attached to their hips.

But McClusky believes that just over the horizon, all that will change.

"I think there is some gadget that is going to hit the market in the next six months or a year from now, and we're going to say, 'Yeah, that's it,'" he said.

Twenty years ago, just over a half million people had cell phones in the United States. Since then, the cell phone has become the communication tool of choice, with 66 percent of Americans gabbing away on the devices, according to a 2005 MIT study.

But as cell phones become increasingly popular, people demand more functions from their phones.

A poll conducted in April by the Pew Research Center found that 47 percent of those sampled want some kind of map or GPS ability on their phones; 38 percent want to be able to send instant messages to friends; 24 percent say they'd like to search for things like movie listings and weather reports; and another 24 percent say they want to send and receive e-mails.