by John_Boden
1. December 2009 15:34
I was on a Wedbush Morgan roundtable panel recently where we discussed mobile applications.
It reminded me again that diversity of background and experience is absolutely critical when you are trying to figure out where a given market or technology is going. Wedbush do a great job with their panels to make sure that the discussion can be open and that everybody from the chip manufacturers through the apps guys in a given space are represented. I am always awed by the caliber of the folks attending and the mutual respect people approach the discussion with.
As a result of Wedbush’s approach, you get a coalescing of opinions from the app guys (like Movius) that things are going a certain way then out of the blue the CEO of a company who optimizes backhaul from the base station says “well, here is the problem if that happens”…and the discussion launches down the path of what impediments are which make that path impractical for another decade.
It reminds me of GPRS. I spent a great deal of time, in what seems like a previous life, launching GPRS as quickly as possible. Five years later, I finally found an application, email of the RIM, which used the technology to add value to my life.
So, in homage to the Wedbush, I would like to do a bit of a survey to see if we can start an educational debate. Let’s start a discussion. What do you think the next hot discontinuity will be in the mobile space? Please give a quick summary of your background and then make your prediction, elaborating on why you expect it to be so. I am really interested in what you have to say.