Long term, this will probably replace most in-lens IS, at least for digicams.
I doubt we'll ever see this for film; it would be much harder to implement, and
it's too late in the game for film.
Never say never... Kyocera (Contax) made an SLR that autofocused with manual focus lenses (the bizzarre AX) by moving the film plane to and fro. I would imagine you could have an entire floating "carrier" inside the camera body that moved the film plane and everything attached to it (takeup spool, film cassette, pressure plate, etc.) antisympathetically to the camera movement... presto, IS with non-IS lenses!
Engineering flexible drives to handle film advance and rewind would be tough; it's probably easier to flex the wires attached to a CCD or CMOS imager.
When I sit and think about it, lenses could be a lot simpler and cheaper if the camera focused by moving the imager back and forth, AX style. Who knows what the future will bring...
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