I know it is a tired phrase but here at the Morgan Stanley Tech Conference the dots seem to be connecting themselves. First let me correct myself, I am at the newly named Technology, Media and Telecom Conference and it is so named because the three formerly distinct areas have converged in most cases. The companies represented here run the gamut from mega cap to small cap, media giant to chip designers and it is impossible to sum up in one post so I will do it in a series of posts. The first one being mobility.
Mobility – whether it is cell phone use, Smartphone use, laptops or slate devices the move to having internet access everywhere is clearly a dominant theme. Over the past few years companies have been talking about a drive to have their product support three screens, Computer, Television and Smartphone/PDA. They are now using a five screen model adding Slate device and car navigation/entertainment screen as the 4th and 5th screen in our lives. This is an important movement as it forces those who could provide content and services to home computers and TV’s in roughly the same format now have to figure out how to keep the user experience strong in vastly different user interfaces.
The lesson that seems to surprise them the most was that mobile operating systems are driving new usage faster than PC’s. I cannot use specific examples in the blog but one company mentioned that 2/3rds of their new users are coming directly from mobile devices and the applications (apps) that they have developed for the new Smartphones. This cannot be overstated, that means that people are no longer looking to match their home computer experience on the road, more likely they would prefer their home computer work more like their Smartphone…
Mobile computing is not an add-on to traditional computing it is now in the driver’s seat.