In fact Gartner’s key insight is that smartphones will soon be able to predict a consumer’s next move, in much the same way that Amazon almost does now by shoving things at you based on your previous wants and behaviour, It calls the capability cognizant computing. It sees this as the next step in personal cloud computing.

“Smartphones are becoming smarter, and will be smarter than you by 2017,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. “If there is heavy traffic, it will wake you up early for a meeting with your boss, or simply send an apology if it is a meeting with your colleague. The smartphone will gather contextual information from its calendar, its sensors, the user’s location and personal data.”

“Mobile phones have turned into smartphones thanks to two things: technology and apps,” said Milanesi. “Technology has added features such as cameras, locations and sensors, while apps have connected those to an array of functions that, for the most part, add and improve our day to day life from a social, knowledge, entertainment and productivity point of view.”

What smartphones can do through apps has improved and broadened thanks to the personal cloud. “We assume that apps will acquire knowledge over time and get better with improved predictions of what users need and want, with data collection and response happening in real-time,” she says.

Figure 1. Four Phases of Cognizant Computing

Source: Gartner (November 2013)

This will creep up on us - starting with menial or time-consuming tasks such as list-making, but building up to the point when the apps and services start to take control of whole aspects of our lives, eventually booking holidays for themselves and jetting off for weeks in the sun.

Clearly just made the last bit up…. didn’t I?