When TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington asked AT&T Wireless CEO-AT&T Mobility Ralph de la Vega during a Q&A  at  Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco what he envisioned iPhone owners will doing with their phones in 2011, Arrington and the audience got a lot more than they might have expected.

“It’s not just about [access] speed,” de la Vega said. “It’s about how to make people’s lives easier…and run their businesses more efficiently and effectively.”

De la Vega described a near future in which iPhone owners would use their phones to wake up, remotely turn on coffee pots and automatically download news. If they wanted an enlarged view of their electronic in-boxes, they could send the iPhones’ contents to nearby TV sets to watch news and read and respond to emails and text messages.

Once ready to leave home for their offices iPhone owners could lock their houses, unlock their cars, use voice recognition to talk to their iPhones, convert speech between text and find the best routes to work.

At their office, iPhone owners could use their phones to make conference calls to say, colleagues in Japan, and to automatically translate the discussion between English and Japanese.

It all sounds both fanciful and Star Trekkian given that 2011 just ain’t that far away but you never know. Check it out:

Earlier last week, de la Vega said iPhone users will “soon” be able to tether their iPhone 3Gs to their laptops to use as wireless modems. He also said AT&T’s acquisition of Wayport, would give the company a total of 20,000 free Wi-Fi hotspots.

For more articles like this, subscribe to the AppCraver RSS feed.

category: Breaking News