Industry Focus:

It’s a Phone, It’s a Computer, It’s a TV…It’s Where the Future of Mobile is Headed

It’s all right there in your pocket: Control over your bank accounts. Your complete music library. Full access to the Internet and email. Real-time TV shows. Movie and restaurant reviews and the directions to get there. Oh, and a full-featured telephone.

For most of us, the tool that gives us all this functionality is a personal computer. But soon — perhaps not this year, but maybe next, and definitely by 2010 — a significant portion of the world’s three billion mobile phone users will be able to effortlessly do all this and more right from their cellular phones.

The stage has already been set. The introduction of the Apple iPhone last year dramatically raised the bar for phone manufacturers and cellular services, and sent user expectations to the stratosphere. Love it or not, the iPhone forced the dialog about what a mobile device can be and do to an entirely new level. Manufacturers and cell services have been scrambling to make iPhone-esque devices, and to one-up Steve Jobs’ latest sensation. Cellular service providers have been prodded to finally open up their networks. And while all this has been happening, Google has thrown its colossal weight behind a new, open mobile software platform, inviting anyone and everyone to develop the next killer cell phone application.

Now that the Internet has matured and become a ubiquitous fixture in personal and professional life, mobile is clearly the new digital frontier. And companies and capital are lining up to lay stake to the biggest claims.

“There’s no question about it,” says Keynote Systems’ Global Director of Streaming Media Jeff Geiser, “mobile is where the final fight is going to happen in terms of eyeballs. For the next two or three years, that’s going to be the fight in the market.”

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