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January 23, 2009
Mobile is redefining everything we know about information
I'm back after a long layoff late last year as I worked on the genesis of our new startup Placr and the birth of our third child: welcome Laurence to the world last month!
So... I'm back with a thought... the one in the title. What do I mean? Well, for some years we have seen the mobile phone as a potential 'universal information appliance'... ever since it was apparent that mobile devices could ship data (around 2000?). Mobiles were small, cheap-ish, easy to use (kind of) and got universal distribution quickly, and so it was only a matter of time before they were put to use as information tools. The reality has been more complex.
What has been fascinating is the way that the really successful applications on mobile have developed as 'twists' on the originally engineered technology. Think of SMS as the classic example... another would be the use of accelerometers intended to change screen aspect, now being used for gaming.
So what are these 'twists' in development and how do they come about? I think they emerge at a messy interface between those who can program and create applications... and those who understand what will sell and how it can pay for itself. Either someone in marketing has to have the 'reach' in tech to define a crazy idea and make it happen, or someone in tech has to have enough funding savvy to get an 'insanely great' tool out there. Ideally, someone holds the ring and brokers these things... but it happens all too infrequently.
This problem is a wider one in innovation, but it is acute in mobile because of the hold that engineers in mobile networks have over the technologies that get distribution. Voice transmission dominates mobile operator revenues and so shifting the balance of capital expenditure and network bandwidth away from voice is too great a risk for most. We had, therefore, erected barriers to innovation by limiting the potential channels to market in the sense of high costs of data and technologies that could not get distribution. This did not discomfit the incumbent operators for most of this decade (they were cash rich), and technologies like aGPS were slowed on the network and in handsets.
As a result, what we have had 'accidental serendipity' in mobile development: that is, when technologies have broken through in an uncoordinated way, for example like tag recognition using cameraphones.
I think something important has now changed that is going to reconfigure the mobile marketplace over the next few years. The arrival of competitors to mobile operators in their own space like Skype, Apple and Google and crucially, the arrival of 'all you can eat' flat mobile data tariffs has liberalised the market. It is now possible for a technology to break through on an open platform (e.g. Linux phones or Google Android) such as digital compasses for orientation support in navigation or gaming. And it is now possible for a service proposition to break through on a regular mobile operator handset as the user can use mobile data without looking over their shoulder at the byte count. Apple has also lowered the bar to distribution of mobile services through the app store on iPhone.
The consequence of this for mobile information? Now we can get applications on our 'universal information appliance' which are 'for the rest of us'. Not designed by engineers at handset manufacturers or mobile operators, but by developers who have the connection to the market from which all really great business propositions spring. So I am loving Twitter on mobile: it has become a kind of open collaboration platform for co-workers and friends, but needs always-on cheap data traffic. Twitter has given me what I didn't know I needed, that is, the ability to 'think aloud in cyberspace' wherever I am. I also love the various GPS-enabled search services and navigation tools that have been enabled by aGPS services provided by third parties like Broadcom.
So, now mobile information is ready to roll, despite the credit crunch. Search, navigation, collaboration, photography, diaries, news, television, guides, teaching: they are all now open for far-reaching innovations as the mobile platform opens out and chews up existing channels to market and settled formats. Now is the time for brokerage between tech and marketing in mobile applications: it has never been easier to gain access to mobile platforms, even if the disciplines of producing stable and usable applications for mobile are still tough.
So, now we face new frontiers in mobile information development:
The developers who are surmounting these challenges to produce new mass applications are changing everything we know about information. Information is being liberated from static and costly delivery formats like the mobile operator portals, which by and large have been terrible. Instead, information is real-time and free at the point-of-use on YouTube or vTap, it is becoming fluid and personal on services like Twitter or Gypsii, and it can be delivered with greater relevance on the move thanks to mobile search like Google Maps. The societal changes that might result will be profound... but that will have to wait for another post.
Jonathan
Posted by raper at January 23, 2009 05:52 PM