Data is Free

A new report, “Next Generation Smartphones: Players, Opportunities & Forecasts 2008-2013,” from Juniper predicts that between 2008 and 2013, annual sales of smartphones will rise by 95% to more than 300 million.

The key finding is that the Web 2.0 centric apps are what is driving the demand. This is reflected in the incredibly growth of the iPhone app store. We are rapidly reaching a point where the app is replacing the browser.

Other findings from the report: As margins on handsets fall, vendors such as Nokia and Sony Ericsson are increasingly diversifying into the service provision arena as a means of bolstering earnings - solutions such as music libraries and location-based social networking present significant opportunities in the future.

“The process of evolving mobile phones into internet-centric, highly personalized mobile computers is well under way,” said Andrew Kitson, the author of the report. “Looking ahead, the shape and form of next-generation devices will most likely be led by software and content, rather than hardware, as vendors such as Nokia strive to make their devices highly personalized and rooted firmly in the online environment.”

What Google has proven is that people will accept advertising in exchange for a free application. Given the current economy with rising unemployment and belt tightening I would expect the rise of advertising supported content and software to be extreme.

Though I was only in 1st grade the year that Jimmy Carter got elected, I still remember the early 70s quite well. Feels like we are going back to that era before cable television when ALL content was ad supported. Not sure how far down this path we'll travel.

I will say, however, that if we are returning to the 70s then Led Zeppelin OWES it to us to get back together. And every concert will be recorded on video-equipped phones and instantly posted to YouTube.

I had coffee with a friend of mine this morning who knows a ton about the ad space and social media.

When I got back to the office I found this note from the ITU announcing that there are 4.1 billion mobile phone subs.

Our conversation, and the link, reminded me of some research I did in grad school where I was working for David Gautschi, now the Dean of the Business School at RPI, then a marketing prof at Washington. He was doing a book on network-effects, and wanted to understand what causes the telephone to turn the curve and gain mass adoption.

The issue that AT&T faced in 1910-1920 was that telephones were strictly used for business, particularly in tall buildings. (People would pick up the phone rather than walk down several flights of stairs in un-airconditioned buildings. Go figure.) AT&T wanted to figure out how to make phones a consumer product.

What turned the corner was they did a test where the wired up farm houses in Iowa. This was in the early 1920s when it was hard to travel. Cars were expensive. Roads were bad. The women in these houses were usually stuck there for weeks at a time with no other women to talk to. You can see where this is going. Usage exploded because the women in these houses were no longer isolated.

This is happening right now with social media. People are going to use their phones as, well, communication tools to maintain contact with their peeps. The only difference is that it is happening at a global scale, not just in Ottumwa.

Someone, maybe Facebook but maybe someone else, is going to do what Coca-Cola did in the 20s and 30s and build a global brand that "teaches the world to sing," or at least teaches the world to harmonize together on the same social mobile platform.