Tuesday 2 April 2013
Granted to Apple today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a patent called "Communications system that provides user-selectable data when user is on-hold" envisions a system for showing useful and interesting information to mobile phone callers waiting on hold.
The information being displayed would be adaptive and contextual, according to the patent, meaning it would vary depending on the caller, the caller's location, the date and time, and other items. As one example, the caller might see details describing the last conversation or future appointments with the person being called. As another example, the caller could be treated to local news and weather reports based on their locale.
As such, some of the details displayed would be pulled from the phone itself, while other details would be oobtained via the Internet. The caller would be presented with a choice of which information to display.
For the technology to work, each caller would have to have a profile on the phone so the system can identifythat person and present the appropriate on-hold information.
