Scribbles

I’ve been thinking hard about the mobile world and its future. Watching smartphone adoption growing without abandon while dragging along an entire ecosystem of new startups reminds me of the excitement of the Internet heydays a decade ago. Right now everyone is trying to figure out where the opportunities are and guessing the new usage patterns. And so far, the speed of these shifts in user behavior and rate of new ideas being implemented feels much faster than 1999.
 
I was more than pleased to attend the PayPal X Innovate conference in San Francisco last month. Aside from being fun (and in the city during the exciting World Series atmosphere), I witnessed first hand what entrepreneurs are working on. From apps that help you order food and beer at ball games, to impulse mobile shopping, the conference never lacked in ideas or diversity. After all, how could it claim to be about “Mobile, Social, Local” without covering pretty much the entire segment of growth markets.
 
Been almost a year since I got my Nexus 1 and I will say that I am a happy user. With the frequent software updates and my heavy usage of Google services, the Android is the ideal platform for me. Luckily through work, I also carry an iPhone 4. You may call me lucky, but trust me when I say it’s real work to forcibly use more than one phone device, trying new applications, on a daily basis. That said, I’m tempted to plunk down $99 for a BlackBerry Torch, so I can experience myself RIM’s shortcomings that draw the pundits prediction of its demise.
 
On the subject of the BlackBerry, one of the things I always talked about RIM doing was to release BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) to all platforms. For whatever reason they feel that keeping one of the flagship apps exclusively on their platform, I never believed it was sufficient to lock in users. Why not open it up to everyone, so existing BB users can communicate with friends not on BB? Well, looks like somebody did it – Kik, a text messaging app that works on all major platforms. Goodbye BBM.
 
Another area of mobile I’m looking into has been emerging markets. Some of them have higher mobile penetration rates than Internet. That logic follows the same infrastructure (more precisely, lack thereof) driven situation where mobile penetration is higher than landlines. Once the social and location based elements are mixed in there, it’s an explosion of new usage and functionality never seen before. And that is truly exciting.
 
As the year wraps up, I’m looking forward to the early 2011 when several events will bring about mobile device Armageddon: iPhone on Verizon, true second generation Android devices, increased smartphone penetration that drives the value of social apps even higher. We’re hitting that curve in the hockey stick growth. Enjoy the ride.