The Future of Mobile (FoM) is....not in the hands of Planet Mobile anymore

I usually try and avoid Future of Mobile type conferences, as they too often remind me of dinosaur flatulence - loud noises, lots of hot air, but ultimately just the repeating of already digested stuff by large beasts from days gone by*

This summary from yesterday pretty much sums up any mobile conference I've been at.

In fact, a recurring theme of conversation throughout the ‘networking breaks’ during the day was the fact that the event should’ve been more accurately labelled ‘An Introduction to the mobile web‘ not ‘The Future of Mobile‘.

In other words, this is not to say the Carsonified conference yesterday was not a "Future of Mobile" Conference - its just that Planet Mobile would dearly like the "future of mobile" to look exactly the same as the past of mobile, just would you all pay us a bit more money please.

But yesterday I thought would be worth attending, simply because - imho - Apple and Google have signalled that the dinosaur time is up, and Mobile is going to change - big time.

Some background - about 2 years ago we helped Tony Fish (who spoke yesterday and is always a voice for progress) and Ajit Jaokar write a book on Mobile Web 2.0. which pretty much summed up the state of play at the time. What is quite shocking is how little has changed since then, when you compare it with the leaps and bounds made in the Web itself since that time.

Apart from voice and sms, which are commoditising to a utility like water and electricity, the obvious killer app of broadband mobile will be access to the Web and all the possible services this will enable. Yet Planet Mobile has proven itself singularly unable to agree on how to do this in the 10 or so years since it was clear this would be the requirement.

The most telling comments to me yesterday were from Dave Burke of Google, who noted they decided to initiate Android because they:

"did not think there was enough innovation in the industry",

...and by Brian Fling of Blue Flavour who noted something that pretty much every commentator has been saying since its launch, that:

“The iPhone is the first Mobile 2.0 device”

In short, as with email, music, probably Mobile Video/TV and now Web Access, Planet Mobile has shown itself unwilling / incapable / whatever of sorting itself out internally and innovating to provide the customer with the services they want.

(Update...in the last day, more has emerged on Google Android - check out here for example)

The result - a number of very large - and very capable - outsiders have looked at the missed opportunities with increasing frustration, and have decided that they may as well sort the industry out themselves, they have nothing to lose as they know the customer is with them, the content players are with them, and there are even successful business models (e.g. DoCoMo) to show how it can be done.

Google Android and the Apple iPhone are not the endgame, but mark the end of the "phoney war", the beginning phase of Mobile Web, as they have shown that you can build a delightful device that makes navigating the web easy, and you can define an open end to end approach to let things interwork.

So will Planet Mobile step up to the mark this time and evolve itself? There have been prophets of doom before, but we suspect that this time if they do not, they are doomed to extinction. The forces coming at them now are far greater than anything the industry has seen before.

* before all my friends in Planet Mobile crucify me...my point is that even thought there are many visionaries and even revolutionaries in Planet Mobile, the industry and most of the players in it are structurally incapapable of changing the industry from within (for various reasons, but that is a different post).