Mobile phone boom predicted
Updated on 25 January 2008
At a time of dizzying uncertainty and constant innovation, one prediction seems certain - the mobile phone business is big and getting even bigger.
Less obvious, judging by the concerns of top executives who focused on the issue at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, is how to cash in.
"There are more than three billion people with cell phones," far more than there are personal computers, said moderator David Kirkpatrick, the senior editor for Internet and technology at Fortune Magazine.
"It will not be long before we are all carrying video (transmitting) cell phones. What we now call the cell phone is becoming the de facto internet device. The technology industry is rapidly becoming the mobile technology industry."
But the panel, which included the heads of Google, Sony, NBC Universal and the China Mobile Communications, seemed less optimistic about the prospects for profit.
"Show me the money is one thing you can ask," said Sony chief executive Howard Stringer. "There isn't any obvious money. Is all voice going to be free going forward? Obviously we're not making enough money off downloading of music to offset the loss of our packaged goods."
Wang Jianzhou, whose company is the largest mobile provider in China, was the most ebullient panel member, noting that China boasts a half billion mobile users and is adding to the number at a rate of six million per month. The future, he suggested, was with "location advertising" enabled by the devices' global positioning system.
"We know where you are. If we want to know how many people are in a stadium, how many people are in a supermarket," he marvelled. "We can know the speed (of cars). So we can send special kinds of information."
Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, was upbeat, predicting "a huge revolution". "It seems obvious that advertising, that works so well on the traditional internet, should also work well on the mobile internet," he said.
"After all, they know where you are. You're driving along and it says, 'Eric, you had pizza yesterday and there's a hamburger stand on the right.' In theory location-based advertising will be a very good business and useful to the end user."
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