This blog includes my notes from (and thoughts about) a talk entitled “The New Economy – An Engineer’s Perspective” given by David Brown (Chairman of Motorola) at the 15th International World Wide Web Conference in Scotland (May 22-26, 2006).
People buy 900,000 mobile phones every 9.5 hours. Today they have the processing power of yesterday’s PC. They are the fourth screen (TV, desktop, car, phone) in the hands of 2 billion people. It is the fourth medium (newspaper, TV, Internet, phone). Why mobility is changing: digitization of everything, expansion of broadband, and the explosion of smart things. All these technologies need to be integrated seamlessly:
- Don’t take a network-centric view, but a user-centric view (continuity of experience). The content should adjust—the user shouldn’t have to adjust. The more personalizable the experience, the higher the value.
- Need user-centric content, privacy, safety, security, always on, full mobility.
- We are racing to offer more personalizable content. People value content that is personal and personalizable and provides a continuity of experience. Think of “a market of one.” Don’t try to standardize the continuity of experience; let each customer identify it for him/herself.
- Open standards and open platforms.
- Mobile Internet
- Service-level interoperability.
- Scalability. Today there are 30 billion Web sites. How many more will there be with mobile phone technology? A thousand times more? A million times more? Consumers will be offered many more choices than today. Organizations must learn this from their customers.
- Bridging the digital divide. In the UK, there are more mobile phones than there are people. Yet 2/3 of the world’s population has no mobile phone and no access to the Internet. How can we connect them? Can the economic benefits of bridging this divide be used to solve their education and other social problems? How can we make mobile devices available to them at ultra low cost? By 2008, the cost should be below $15. (See post lost-cost-phones-becoming-a-reality.)
- Regulation and taxation. We need to convince governments not to tax mobile devices as luxury devices. 20% of the cost of owning and using a mobile device goes to taxes. We also need to convince service providers to establish pricing plans that will encourage mobile Web access.
