Valuations of individual companies in emerging industries can be tricky. Better questions to explore would be Q(a) "What is the value of the mobile payments s

Valuations of individual companies in emerging industries can be tricky. Better questions to explore would be Q(a) "What is the value of the mobile payments sphere?" Q(b) "Is the industry growing, or on the decline?" and Q(c) "Are there any current industry leaders? If so, what percent of the market have they captured?" My take: A(a) Completely speculative; because the valuation of the industry depends upon the adoption of a specific kind of hardware in this case, the valuation of one startup in an untapped sphere is basically irrelevant. A(b) Mobile payments, just like "mobile" everything else, is an industry that is on the incline. Ergo: probably a good industry to play with risk. A(c) Not yet. There will be a "first-mover advantage" for the first company that attains modest adoption (Square seems to be headed there). But there is also a LOT of room for competitors to build a better revenue model that diverges from the traditional one. Square's current business strategy seems to echo the very old-fashioned credit card machine model of making revenue per transaction (which is something that most business owners detest). And an Extra Credit Q: . . . ECQ(d) Is the future headed toward having more buyers or more sellers of the kinds of transactions that a "mobile payments" system would help grow? Some interesting things to think about. ;)