Jonathan Gets It, Do You?
Jonathan Schwartz just got back from 3GSM and continues to preach the mobile gospel. It's nice to see more Valley execs evangelize the religion:
Java is continuing to grow, and accelerate - on both the devices (and SIM cards embedded within them), and in the network infrastructure. There are now over 500,000,000 Java enabled phones in the world, and more than 60% of all new phones will ship, from the factory, Java enabled. The rush of new developers we're adding to the nearly 5 million Java developers are J2ME developers, folks creating the services (from commercial to social) through which the majority of the world will experience the internet.
And just in case you missed it, let me say it again: the majority of the world will first experience the internet through their mobile phones. We sometimes forget that 10 times as many people bought handsets last year as PC's. Round numbers, there were a BILLION wireless devices sold last year, and around 100 million PC's. To that end, the odds are much higher you'll watch broadcast broadband content on your phone than on your PC - and now that Nokia (and their peers) are the world's largest camera manufacturers (just think about that for a moment), the odds are far higher you'll even create broadband content on your handset. Talk about change. Comdex is dead, long live 3GSM.
Emphasis *his*! He really gets what's happening in the mobile world.
Jonathan's numbers are a bit off, but I dig his enthusiasm. Last year's numbers are a bit lower for handsets - 700 million at last count, maybe he's adding in a few hundred million other "wireless devices" I'm not counting - and more PCs. For this year, I've seen predictions of 200 million PCs being sold (10% more than last year) and 735 million new mobile phones - though I think that number is low, the mBoom is just starting. If that doesn't wake you up (and keep companies like Dell, HP, Gateway and Apple awake at night) I'm not sure what will.
I'd like to get Jonathan to speak at a Mobile Monday event. Can anyone help me out with that?
-Russ