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Mobile First

The world around us has moved on - yet a lot of us (yours truly included) are somewhat stuck in the past. That is - the PC era. If you ever had a doubt that the future is mobile and that this future is here - read this interview excerpt from Charlie Rose talking with Glenn Hutchins (Hutchins is the Co-CEO of Silver Lake who just made a killing selling Skype to Microsoft).

“What made Skype attractive to you? It didn’t look like such a big deal when eBay owned it.”

“I think that mobile telephony, or broadband mobility, is potentially the largest investment opportunity of our lifetimes. Rough numbers: There are 5 billion subscriptions to handsets today, 4 billion devices. We’re 25 to 30 years into the PC trend and there’s only a billion PCs in use. There are low­ single-digit billion bank accounts, TV sets, credit cards. These are some of the largest consumer markets ever developed. But 4 billion handsets. Why can’t you make a phone call in New York? Because it’s like everybody is trying to get on the FDR Drive at one time. Everybody wants to be on the network. These devices that we use now are increasing the data that go across the network by 10, 15, and 20 times, which means that the use of networks is at least doubling every year. We’re in an economy in which people are worried about whether it’s going to be 1 or 2 percent growth, and you’ve got a part of the world that’s doubling every year.”

Quote of the Day

The share of adults in the United States who own tablet computers nearly doubled from 10% to 19% between mid-December and early January and the same surge in growth also applied to e-book readers, which also jumped from 10% to 19% over the same time period.

The number of Americans owning at least one of these digital reading devices jumped from 18% in December to 29% in January.

I can not emphasize enough what this means - the future is upon us! If you don’t develop your stuff for mobile and tablets (as well as the large install base of PCs), you’re not only missing the largest shake-up in the IT industry for decades but also soon gone.