Mobile Apps For All
January 9th, 2007 by John Lawrence
There may be some debate over which mobile application will experience the greatest proliferation over the coming years - gaming, social networks, search, GPS, commerce, photography, TV & video, music, messaging (text, IM or email)… I think there is little debate however that mobile devices will become increasingly important tools in our business and personal lives. The Consumer Electronics Show kicked off this week. In his key note address, Bill Gates commented on mobile devices taking market share from the PC market. Reuters reported on the number of mobile devices allowing for ease of use when it comes to mobile applications.
How prolific will mobile devices be in our lives? How much are we willing to pay for this assortment of mobile apps? How will the advertisers enter the space and how will they subsidize our costs? How will the traditional wireless providers and media companies compete for this business? How will these apps be sold - direct to consumer, through carriers, through media properties?
2007 will be an interesting year as we all watch as these questions begin to be answered.
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Hi John,
I thought you’d be interested in this fascinating analysis of Bill Gates’ keynote: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/110473.asp
Brian.
John
I spent three days at the Gartner Wireless and Mobility Conference last week. The Mobile industry is ripe for opportunity, but very fragmented at this time. The B2C market (things like buying tickets, barcodes, reservations, etc…) seem to be more accepted in Asia and lag behind here in the States. Carriers, device makers, application providers, and financial institutions need to align to remove some of the barriers that exist.
The Enterprise market is equally fragmented and much harder to justify the ROI within an enterprise, except for wireless email (which everyone expects) and fucntional/vertical applications (not enterprise wide). However, IM/Presence/Chat is catching up to email as a ubiquitous mobile enterprise application. But, in general device and OS battles still loom large and make any real enterprise deployment difficult.
Like all other major paradigm shifts (PC’s, Networks, and Internet), it will happen and be a major part of our life. There will just be a lot of road kill along the way.