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Mobile Changes Everything
- whysonot 11y agoIn case anybody is interested in the google books chart of the word "mobile": https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=mobile&year_start=1800&year_end=2010&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmobile%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=mobile&year_st... After the context is set, the most important page appears to be 44. It suggests that the next blessing[1] of unicorns will tackle enormous markets by building products around mobile. Didn't this shift already happen? I couldn't think of many major industries that don't already have mobile-first contenders. Maybe I'm missing the point of the "tech is outgrowing tech' sentiment? [1] http://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_a_group_of_unicorns_called http://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_a_group_of_unicorns_called
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- paulgayham 11y agomobile is irrelevant and 'app's are mostly crap. My phone has flappy bird and that's it.
- quantisan 11y agoThe $30 fully featured smartphone is already here. I've been using a Microsoft Lumia 635 ($30 with no contract, $50 unlocked in US) as my main driver for a month. Sure it doesn't take epic photos or play the latest mobile games. But everything you'd expect works surprisingly well. Compare it to a couple of years ago, even a $100 Android phone felt castrated back then.
- pjmlp 11y agoChanges everything and yet they have a website that displays like crap on my mobile, forcing me to zoom in page sections.
- mathattack 11y agoI'm a huge Benedict Evans fan, but is this news anymore?
- Neeraj_10 11y agoEverything has a two consequences, same is the case here. Mobile is a revolution in the world of technology.
- CodingGuy 11y agoI love mobile first - all idiots are leaving the web again! :)
- Animats 11y agoMobile puts users back in their proper role as consumers, where they belong. The personal computer, and the Internet, were originally seen as subversive tools of empowerment. Remember those "manifestos of cyberspace" from the 1990s? Remember cyberpunk? Well, that didn't happen. Most Internet traffic today goes to the top 10 sites. None of those sites are even run by companies with a broad shareholder base. The billionaires are firmly in charge. "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." - Orwell.
- hpaavola 11y agoThere is always a small market for a slow lumberjack, but there is zero reason to use anything else than the best software. Best lumberjacks might live in different corner of the world and they are most likely busy. So you hire the slow one. But with software things are different. When software is eating the world, it means creating monopolies in all markets. All text messaging is being eaten by one company, there is only one social network, there is only Twitter, soon there is only one taxi company and there have pretty much always been only one professional photo editing software. And the list just goes on forever. How on earth do we collect taxes and finance social services and all that stuff when there is only handful of companies turning a profit and they need fewer and fewer hands building the service and they are not tied to a geographical location?
- e12e 11y agoStrange definition of "best software", if you're implying that a) "best software" wins, b) the top 10 sites are examples of "best software". Google is still best at search for most sane metrics. But to claim that they're "best" at email, blogging, image services? Or even good? For the end users? Popular does not imply best (or even good). It implies marketing and mind-share.
- hpaavola 11y agoI don't claim to be smarter than the whole market. So yes, GMail is the best email application (assuming it has the biggest market share, not sure about that) because that's what the market tells us. It might not be good, but it is the best. But better term would have been "best software service" or something like that. Since at least early version of Facebook were bad software, but it was already the best social media service since all your friends were using it. Also, Netflix might be really crappy software (I doubt it, but it could) but because it has the best movie library combined with the best prices, everybody uses it.
- haxel 11y ago"Everyone gets a pocket supercomputer" - Slide 8 I see this idea repeated so often, but it's unfortunate that we don't also have the _value_ of a supercomputer in our pocket. The sole purpose of a supercomputer is to advance the interests of its owner, who has exclusive control over it. Whether the purpose is prediction, or simulation, or to advance the state of the art, the benefit goes to the owner. Yet we seem to have less and less control over our smart-phones. With so much information about each of us being siphoned off through the Internet, it's easy to wonder whose interest they serve. With all of the advances in computing power, you'd think we'd put a bit more imagination into capturing more value for each individual smart-phone user, and less into centralized capture and analysis of our digital activity.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- sliverstorm 11y agoWhat a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. This isn't some Marxist struggle between the owners of the means of production and the smartphoneliteriat. The reason we don't realize the value is because we haven't concocted applications. Supercomputers crunch data & perform math. That's what they are good at, and their value (as I know it) is primarily rooted in their ability to advance math & science (& defense, as it relates to math & science). But nobody has really figured out what sort of massive scientific computation we should be doing with our pocket computers. Some of it is there- for example, I wrote an app that performs geodetic math that was supercomputer-only in the 60's- but in general, folding proteins and simulating physics in your pocket is not useful to Joe Smartphone.
- mirimir 11y agoTo the extent that smartphones are "supercomputers", they're mostly super at games and video. Otherwise they're more like dumb terminals than PCs.
- sliverstorm 11y agoAs used today, yes. And that's kind of the point of the original observation. Smartphones are not true supercomputers. But they still smoke a Cray-1, and yet we use them as dumb terminals. What can we use that power for, that filled a room twenty years ago? Their existing roles have value! But there is a sense of leaving something untapped, when you use them only as dumb terminals. A sense of, what am I missing?
- danblick 11y agoGreat presentation. This focuses on new business opportunities enabled by technology... but what kinds of political changes would you expect as half the world's population gets access to cheaper information and communication? Which institutions would you expect to gain or lose?
- cstuder 11y agoAdditional food for thought: The newest statistics about landline and mobile adoption from the CDC: http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/23/8826159/wireless-only-households-study-cdc-nhis http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/23/8826159/wireless-only-hous...
- choppaface 11y agoThe presentation touches on smartphone penetration and communication behaviors of teens but really doesn't grapple with that phenomenon with any novel amount of rigor. The talk is aimed at making us believe in (i.e. want to invest in) tech. The argument is that the opportunity is so big, even fools who just throw money in the pot stand to make money. The trouble is that we're mostly aware of how awesome mobile penetration is and how vital social networks are. I'd much rather see the preso that brings new evidence and rigor to the table than the last ditched effort to pick up conservatives who have been ignoring tech for the past 7 years. If a16z wants to chart progress, would love to see some of these graphs posted online and live-updated daily/monthly.
- donkeyd 11y agoThere was a time, when the big investors were saying things like "even fools who just throw money in the pot stand to make money". I think it was around the year 2000. It worked out well for a few of those big investors, not so much for the fools.
- graycat 11y ago=== Overview "Mobile" -- an astoundingly popular collection of new products? Yes. "Changes everything"? No. Mobile is new and popular? Yes, and at one time in the US so were tacos. New and popular are not nearly the same as changing everything. === Use a Smartphone? Could I use a smartphone to buy from Amazon? Yes. Would I? Very definitely, no! Why not? (1) If the user interface (UI) is a mobile app instead of a Web page, no thanks. Why? Because with a Web page and my Web browser and PC, I get to keep a copy of the relevant Web pages I used in the shopping and buying. And I very much want to keep that data for the future. (2) Want to keep those copies of Web pages on a mobile device? Not a chance. Why? Because for such data, I want my PC with its hardware and software. I want the Windows file system (NTFS), my text editor and its many macros, and my means of finding things in the file system. My PC also gives me a large screen, a good keyboard, a good printer, a mouse (I don't want to keep touching the screen -- in fact, my PC screen is not quite close enough for me to touch), ability to read/write CDs and DVDs, backup to a USB device, etc. Do I want to backup to the cloud? Not a chance. I backup to local devices. Why? Because for cloud backup, money, a cloud bureaucracy, the Internet, spooks, and lawyers could get involved. === Business My business is a Web site. I'm developing that on my PC, and will go live on a PC -- in both cases, a PC, not a mobile device. Mobile users of my Web site? Sure: My Web pages should look and work fine on any mobile device with a Web browser up to date as of, say, 10 years ago. === New Business for A16Z It sounds like A16Z likes mobile because for 2+ billion poor people smartphones are their first computer and are new and popular. Okay, then, A16Z, here's another business you should like -- bar soap. Also, of course, just from the OP, tooth brushes. No way should we forget -- salt. Okay, of course -- sugar. Sure, one more -- toilet paper. Naw, got to have one more, plastic knives, forks, spoons, and drinking cups. Not to forget -- sell them batteries for their smartphones. Maybe even solar panel recharging for their smartphones! Especially for A16Z, got to have one more -- sure, Kool Aid. === Summary A computer is the most important tool in my life. Currently my PC is my computer. A smartphone most definitely does not replace my computer. Actually, at present I have no use for a smartphone, a cell phone, or a mobile device and, so, have none. Actually some years ago a friend gave me a cell phone. Once I turned it on, and some complicated dialog came up about my reading some contract and sending money. I turned the thing off and haven't turned it back on since. Or, my PC has a network effect: It has all my data and means of entering, storing, processing, communicating, and viewing data, all in one place. A mobile device cannot be that one place, and, due to the network effect, I don't want to split off some of my data into a mobile silo. === Denouement This post was written, spell checked, etc. with my favorite text editor, using my favorite spell checker, on my PC, and no way would I have wanted to have done this post on a smartphone.
- zargath 11y agoI think it is very "dangerous" to say mobile = smartphone = iOS + Android, at least that is what I hear people say. What about all the billion devices we get in clothe, toys, tracking, etc? You can make insanely fast and small hardware today, and it will be used for awesome stuff. That is not just because you have a smart-phone in your nasty little pocketses. .-)
- mdpopescu 11y agoSeriously? "Microsoft is dead" again? Hasn't he learned from the last time he said that? :)
- lucian 11y agoslide 31 / video min 16:07 ------------------------------ Global SMS: 20 bn messages a day WhatsApp: 30 bn messages a day. (with just 40 engineers) ------------------------------ should be refactored: ------------------------------ Global SMS: 20 bn messages a day (10.000 Engineers using C/C++/Java - just guessing) WhatsApp: 30 bn messages a day (with just 40 engineers using Erlang) ------------------------------
- blackRust 11y agoTwo things that are very wrong with this: 1. WhatsApp is dependant on cellular infrastructure which you count into your 10k engineers. 2. "Erlang was designed with the aim of improving the development of telephony applications."[1] So it powers/powered a large part of the cellular infrastructure. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlang_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlang_(programming_language)
- sriram_sun 11y agoIsn't SMS using the cellular infrastructure as well?
- z3t4 11y agoMobiles and personal computers are different, but the difference will eventually blur. What worries me though, is that currently mobiles are not as great as PC's when it comes to learning and creating. And that will slow technology growth, as todays youth are consumers rather then hackers/creators. To make mobile software you still need a PC :P
- hathym 11y agosupercomputers to facebook and play candy crush, what a wonderful change
- jimduk 11y agoOne comment from experience Slide 21 "The mobile supply chain dominates all tech" / Flood of smartphone components - Lego for technology The shiny Lego is only available for the major players. For the current key components - GPU/CPU/Camera sensor - you can't order them/get support/get docs unless you have scale or amazing connections. If you are a hardware startup your lego is 2/3 yrs behind the big players, and behind public perception. This makes complete sense once you look at chip fab costs/profit models and the industry structure, but is not great for disruption from smaller players. NB this was from a European perspective of doing things officially - it's possible there might be more 'unofficial' components and support if this is done in China with strong local support
- revelation 11y agoThis has been a long tradition in the hardware industry, it's nothing to do with mobile. I guess the problem with mobile is more that you need much more expertise to properly design hardware on a mobile scale, and the scale makes every step so much harder. It's a huge barrier to entry.
- gavanwoolery 11y agoJust because mobile is more prevalent does not make it more valuable, in fact, quite the opposite: the fact that it reaches more classes dilutes the spending power of the average user. What we have ended up with is a segment with extreme competition AND low app prices (the average PC app sells for at least 10x more than a mobile app). But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Although we have tried to app-ify everything, I still prefer doing 99 percent of tasks on a device with a real keyboard and enough horsepower to prevent lag (in spite of rapid improvements, I still find the lag on my mobile device (1 year old now - HTC One M8) to be frustrating).
- Zigurd 11y agoThere is a lot of meditation on the meaning of "Everyone gets a pocket supercomputer" here. Thing is, mobile devices are not pocket personal computers. You might wish they were, and maybe someday the few million of you, out of the 1.5-2 billion annual mobile device customers, worldwide who wish it will have mobile devices you really can take complete control of. Heck, out of the 300 million annual PC customers, how many of them buy PCs thinking "This is my personal computer?" And if we really want secure, controllable, personal computers, we'll need to re-invent them because PCs long ago sold out to IT and monitoring and compliance and all that.
- austenallred 11y agoHoly hell, hackers. This isn't about you. Nearly all of the comments in this thread are extremely negative - ranging from hand-wavy about how valuable mobile is to expressing excitement that "[dumb] people will [again] be leaving the Internet." What an incredibly pessimistic and self-centric way of viewing the world. The incredible thing about a supercomputer that fits in your hand isn't that we're putting them in the hand of hackers who went to MIT 40 years ago. It's not exciting for someone who was going to be sitting behind a Linux terminal anyway. This pretty much changes nothing for them. But it changes everything for the kid in sub-Saharan Africa who has never had access to a computer. It changes everything for my friend's family in Iran - none of them ever had a computer, and now all of them have a smartphone. It even changes everything for my father-in-law - a hay farmer who had little interest in using a computer, but inexplicably loves his iPad. He takes it out to the farm and performs what I would consider the most trivial of computing tasks, but it's something he never did before, even when PCs were cheap and ubiquitous and I spent hour after hour teaching him how to scroll and double-click. Of course, hackers are right: That smartphone is not be as good at editing photos as your 15-inch Macbook Pro. And it's a horror to write code from. But, to borrow an analogy from Peter Thiel, the difference between editing photos on your phone and editing them on a computer may be a move from 1 to n for hackers. Hackers, who have been at n for years, are rational in not caring. For this Iranian family, and for my father-in-law, however, this is a move from 0 to 1. And that's a big deal. Are the operating systems more closed than hackers would like them to be? Yes. But my friend's family in Iran has neither the interest nor the ability to hack on the kernel of some mobile operating system, so they don't really care. Is it harder for them to type on a phone than it is on a keyboard? Of course, but now they're typing something. It works, and they're using it, and that's a big, big deal. This isn't necessarily a revolution of what it's possible to do with computers, but a revolution of who can do things with computers. We'll soon be reaching economies of scale we could never imagine. Access, where there previously was none. That you can call an Uber because it's in your pocket and happens to include GPS, in my mind, is just a side-benefit.
- haxel 11y agoHave you considered that less control for the user is more control for someone else? The more we do on computers that are opaque to us, and yet interconnected on the Wild West of the Internet with OS's with known vulnerabilities (and potentially backdoors) and privacy-hostile apps, the deeper and more detailed our activity and communications can be tracked. Are those good conditions for a healthy balance of power? Perhaps citizens of developing countries will face less-tolerant political climates than we're fortunate to have. The long-term consequences of a lack of control over our smartphones, which as per the presentation deck we tend to have with us all the time and use very frequently, and also have tremendous sensor capacity, seem to be worth some thought.
- baristaGeek 11y agoPretty informative presentation, but the last slides are misleading. It makes sense that the frequency of the word representing a certain technology in different books throughout time is modeled by a normal distribution. However, because the reason why they were included in a text creates such a huge bias/mental trap, such frequency shouldn't be a relevant indicator to measure the "sex appeal" of an industry.
- oldpond 11y agoI would love to see a green screen interface on a phone, touchable, of course. sings I got a mainframe in my pocket...
- oneiric 11y ago"Computerization" Did anyone here ever use that term? Is it appropriately grouped with railways, steel and software?