Business Insider (BI), the business web site that grew out of Silicon Alley Insider, recently posted “The Future of Mobile“, an overview of the mobile marketplace. The presentation draws on a mix of information that you may have seen elsewhere to make the argument that mobile “is changing everything”.
We do seem to become more “mobile” by the day. As BI points out:
- Last year, for the first time, the number of smartphones soldexceeded the number of PCs sold.
- Globally, smartphones make up only 13% of the estimated 6.4 billionmobile phones (so much more change to come)
- In the United States, the share of smartphones has only just passedthe share of “feature phones”
- Tablets alone are expected outsell PCs by 2015
Although not specifically called out, the chart provided for the last observation projects e-reader sales to be roughly flat after 2013.
The middle part of the presentation offers an interesting comparison of the Apple and Android platforms, noting that Android has a “fragmentation problem” and that iOS is “where the money is“. BI offers four platform futures, ranging from “Android gets its act together” to “Apple takes over the world”.
Happily, one of the middle options is “HTML5 nukes native apps“. There aren’t too many examples of that just yet, but (as evidenced in the BI presentation) the mobile space is changing fast enough that today’s leaders are unlikely to take their situation for granted.
