Mobile Web Wars

For those of you interested in mobile web development check out the
ustream pre-recorded video link of the TechCrunch Mobile Web Wars
Roundtable - it's 2 hours in length.

The participants on the TechCrunch Mobile Web Wars Roundtable are:

David Rivas, Nokia, Vice President of Technology Management for S60 Software
Walt Doyle, CEO Ulocate
Tom Conrad, CTO Pandora
Greg Yardley, CEO of Pinch Media
Bart Decrem, CEO of Tapulous
David Hornik, partner, August Capital
Jed Stremel, Director of Mobile at Facebook
Guy Ben-Artzi, Founder of Real Dice and CEO of Mytopia
Jason Devitt, CEO of Skydeck
Gannon Hall, CMO of Kyte
Sam Altman,CEO of Loopt
Marc Davis, chief scientists of Yahoo’s mobile group
Omar Hamoui, CEO of AdMob
Richard Wong, partner at Accel
Andreas Weigend, people & data (former chief scientist, Amazon)
Tatsuki Tomita, SVP of Consumer Product, Opera
Mike Rowehl, chief architect SkyFire
Mary Ann Cotter, CEO, Cooking Capsules
John Faith , GM and VP of Mobile for MySpace



Interesting thoughts that 'i' took out of the video;

Not a single developer is going to be building iPhone only application development - they are ALL continuing to develop for other platforms.

That a lot of easy cross platform growth is being made by web based (eg browser based) applications.

The 'ease' of distribution of applications using the apple app store has been 'perceived' to be easier because the carriers got out of the way. The jury is still out as to whether one 'overlord' has been replaced with another.

Lol I loved at about the 40 minute mark how the editor of Techcrunch shut up one of the panelist who was 'poo pooing' Android and saying how much it sucked and how hopeless it was by saying in 6 months from now I'm going to put your face next to that quote when you are raving how good Android is.

One of the comments I really hadn't considered is why does Japan have a much higher rate of mobile content consumption....'and they dont have iPhones'. What exactly is it that has finally enabled an 'excited consumption of mobile content'.

One of the comments that followed that is possibly it's related to the simple fact that the iPhone was bundled with flat rate data. It's finally cheap enough and 'unthinking' enough to just jump online and access whatever you want without worrying.

There is a lot of concern that Android becoming fractured; because it's so 'open' the carriers and handset vendors have the choice of how it's implemented....what happens when variations cause applications to fail.

Interesting comment at 1.05 around Facebook and location based information.... they are concerned about not doing it right....so will err on the side of caution. Interesting that they are going to behind the scenes track that you are using an iPhone and therefor will be be 'floating up' into your facebook feeds what apps your friends are downloading.

Great comment at 1.10 around micro billing for transactions between 50c - $2, this i really really agree is fantastic. This is what I believe the developers are chasing.....whether they actually make money is yet to be seen. I personally think too many are expecting to advertise 'only' on the istore and be found.... I'm waiting for the pendulum to swing the other way and for people to realise that they are being lost in the wash and they need some other way of being 'found' by potential customers.

Carrier 'transaction taxes' for payments of offline goods using premium sms etc is solely being held up 'by short sighted carriers'.

Good comment by Richard Wong a VC at Accel about the 'ingredients' for really good enterprise vertical apps on multiple mobile platforms so he is looking forward to more of these being launched.

Wow i had no idea that you cant install a new browser on the iPhone. great comment about everyone being stuck on ie.5 without open competition.

Interesting question from Robert Scoble about the lack of travel apps - equally interesting response from the developer that stupid apps, games etc are the low hanging fruit. My personal thoughts are maybe this is where developers can 'differentiate' themselves from the masses.

lol funny European/USA juxtaposition at 1.45 around privacy and government overview.

Great comment about application and concept cloning/theft and how what keeps you ahead of everyone else is simply execution.



My own personal take is that it's simply processor speed and data speed and really no more than that. Yes iPhone raised the UI barrier - but there are other areas like multi-tasking apps where they failed.

Either way...may we live in interesting times :)

Cheers,
Dean