Photos: The future of mobile life - in the lab

This is professor Kristina Höök, professor at the department of computer and systems science at Stockholm University. Höök heads up the Mobile Life Centre in Kista, Sweden, where a team of academics have around 21 million Swedish kronor (£1.63m) per year in funding until 2017 to research and develop the next generation of mobile services.

The team works closely with tech companies, including Ericsson, Microsoft, Sony Ericsson and Scandinavian mobile operator TeliaSonera, to explore how mobile apps and services could evolve in the coming years.

The Centre's focus is on understanding what makes for a good user experience on mobile, and developing apps that enable mobile users to interact with each other in increasingly engaging ways.

The challenge now for the rest of the mobile industry is to compete and catch up with Apple, according to Höök. "They have to produce a user experience that is as beautiful and nice as this one and make it possible for you to download services easily, to create services easily and so on," she said.

Photo credit: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com