from Hacker News

Mobile is Eating the World

by tomazstolfa on 10/28/14, 11:08 PM with 151 comments

• by cageface on 10/29/14, 12:02 AM

  There is no point in drawing a distinction between the future of technology and the future of mobile.

  I find Evans' analysis of mobile a bit hyperbolic. Yes the growth of mobile is explosive and, in some cases, it's displacing older technology. But for a lot of use cases small touch screen devices are simply inadequate. It's probably true that a lot of people that used to use desktop or laptop computers just to check email and Facebook have shifted that activity to their phones and tablets. But its equally true that these devices are still really only good for quick, informal communication and browsing. Despite the best efforts of Apple and Samsung to persuade us otherwise, tablets are lousy for getting real work done.

  So we find ourselves in the ironic situation of a domain that is experiencing almost unprecedented growth but in which almost nobody is making money except Facebook and the vendors of what are essentially gimmicky slot machine games. My take on this is that the market for richer desktop/laptop software isn't going anywhere soon. People that need to edit complex spreadsheets, compose scores for films, analyze genomes, and render 3d effects need real computers. As a developer this kind of customer is in many ways a better customer to serve than a teen snapping selfies on a phone.

• by fidotron on 10/28/14, 11:55 PM

  Is this actually true? My perception is that the smartphone bubble is bursting. Yes, there are lots more people to come online, but all they're going to do is use WhatsApp and Facebook.

  The big disappointment of mobile is that all this stuff doesn't seem to result in enabling people to do their jobs better or more easily. Web apps really exploded with things like Basecamp, but the most mobile has brought along for that seems to be mobile email. (Edit to add, the only exceptions I can think of to this are actually the SMS apps deployed in the places pegged to explode in smartphone usage).

  Having lots of people mindlessly addicted to notifications is not really that interesting.

• by ams6110 on 10/29/14, 1:33 AM

  From one of the slides: Email is for grandparents

  I think this varies. I'm not a grandparent, but am close to 50 years old and have been working in computer technology my entire adult life. I have an Android smartphone (got my first one this year) but have not installed any apps on it. Email, web browser, text messages, calendar, contacts, and maps are all there and I can't really think of anything else useful I'd want it to do.

  My mother-in-law on the other hand IS a grandmother and she's constantly using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and half a dozen other things on her phone. I don't see the point in any of it and don't use any of those things.

  Not sure who is the outlier.

• by Ologn on 10/29/14, 2:00 AM

  I mainly program Android apps, many for my side business.

  Some people here have said "mobile has peaked". I go around with my Android mobile phone, and I have trouble finding out what time stores close. I have trouble finding nearby supermarkets. I certainly can't find out if supermarkets have an item in stock, or if the item on sale. I can't find a nearby bathroom to use.

  We are nowhere near mobile peaking. Yes, there may be a little bubble now that fizzles out before it comes back again. Kind of like how there was a website bubble, which fizzled in 2000, and then four years later Facebook was started. The day I can punch into my phone asking where I can buy a chair, and get back most of the local stores, and what they have in stock, and for what price - that is when the "smartphone bubble" is soon to "burst".

• by diltonm on 10/29/14, 1:24 AM

  My smartphone has 2 Gigs of RAM and most of it is wasted. Games on phones aren't even interesting because my fingers slide right off the screen when the action gets fast. Give me a PC with 2 Gigs of RAM and I can do amazing things with it, a mouse and a keyboard. Every single phone app I use is an exercise in futility or it feels that way. Touch is a terrible HID. Smart phones are handy when you don't have anything else but man I really prefer anything else, I'm considering buying a Chrome laptop or Surface if I can wipe them and install Ubuntu on them and can plug in a SIM card; not a bigger phone, a real computer.

• by Cyther606 on 10/29/14, 2:17 AM

  By these figures, 80% of the world will be carrying a mobile spy tool by 2020. I refuse to do anything on a mobile phone that is conceivably worse than PG-13. Until mobile hardware is free and open, I only view the proliferation of mobile Internet as a tool for human enslavement.

• by jerf on 10/28/14, 11:51 PM

  The western world right now is in a bit of a defeatist mood and pessimism reigns supreme. And while I can't deny that all things end and in some sense civilization is scheduled for some receding, I find myself wondering what impact this sort of technology will have on that process. Technology is speeding everything up so much and so fast... what if technology speeds up our next "dark age" from centuries to decades... or decade... or mere years? What if we're even already halfway through the decline?

  We know technology is a big game changer. Sometimes we overestimate that impact, but sometimes we underestimate it too. What will it do for everyone to have a smartphone? Heck if I know! But perhaps it's reason for at least a smidge of hope.

• by InclinedPlane on 10/29/14, 2:00 AM

  The evolution of mobile technology has ironically been held back by its success. Today it's too easy to make money in mobile devices, just make things thinner, shinier, faster, and prettier and you're most of the way there. And then you can rake in massive profit margins in a market where people replace their devices on a timeframe measured in months. It's practically raining cash in the land of successful mobile manfuacturers.

  But once we get past this early stage of mobile success people will be looking to gain more productivity out of their devices. Today have the power and OS chops to handle beefy tasks, but for the most part the UX and peripheral experience isn't there. But that'll change. There will be more attachable keyboards, more desktop docking stations, etc. And then the use of tablets and smartphones in business will drive the manufacturers to service that market more and more to meet those needs.

  Meanwhile, the low end of mobile will get cheaper as the developing world starts to gain access to computing and folks find out how valuable that market is and figure out how to serve it.

  This is the 2nd wave of the personal computing revolution and it's only just barely started, what we'll see in the next 10 years will blow the doors off the last decade.

• by ThomPete on 10/29/14, 4:19 AM

  This remind me of the race towards smaller phones we experienced in the pre-smartphone era I don't see Sonys ultra small mobiles being in vogue anymore. We seem to forget a simple fact.

  The smartphone was not a better phone but a smaller computer. The idea that mobile is somehow replacing most of the other platforms and their usage is simply misplaced.

  Mobile is part of a diverting technology trend not converging.

• by sinofsky on 10/29/14, 3:54 AM

  At every moment of disruption in technology people saying that the new technology doesn't replace the incumbent. By definition disruptive technologies are less functional and inadequate "replacements".

  First, folks tend to talk about all the things that the new technology can't do that the old one does do. In the Steve Jobs interview at All Things D referenced in the comments, he goes on to talk about how software needs to get written--"it is just software" he says. In the near term history we have seen this same dynamic in the advent of the GUI relative to CUI or in the way browser/HTML subsumed the GUI client-server apps. People are writing more code all the time that is "mobile only" even if some of it reinvents or reimagines the desktop/laptop world. I was struck by Adobe's recent developer conference where they showed many mobile apps. As an always aspiring photog we can see how the field is transitioning.

  Second, people tend to underestimate the way that new tools, as ineffective as they are, drive changes in the very definition of work. Said another way, people forget that tools can also define the work and jobs people have. It isn't like work was always "mail around a 10MB presentation before the meeting". In fact a long time ago meeting agendas were typed out in courier by a typist -- that job was defined by the Selectric. The tools that created presentations, attachments, and follow up email defined a style of working. While we're reading all this, the exponential rise of mobile is changing what it means to work--to go to a meeting, to collaborate, to decide, to create, etc.

  What is so fascinating about this transition is that we might be seeing a divide where creators of tools will use different tools, at least for some time, than the masses that use tools. Let's not project the needs of developers on to the whole space. We might reach a point where different tools are needed. Two years ago I might have said this applies to a lot of fields, but the rapid rise of mobile and tablet based software for many things is making that argument weak. Cash registers, MRI machines, video annotation, and more are all scenarios I have seen recently where one might have said "needs a real OS" or "this need sa full PC". As with the the idea of underestimating software, our own desire to find an anchor pushes us to view things through a lens where our own work doesn't change.

  All of this is happening. In parts of the world they are skipping over PCs (Africa and China). Everyone is seeing their time in front of a screen go up enormous amounts and most of that is additive, but for many there is a substitute effect. This doesn't happen overnight or for everyone. TO deny it though is to deny the very changes that led to supporting the idea that the mouse, overlapping windows, and color once displaced other technologies where people said those were not substitutes for the speed, efficiency, or capabilities of what was in use.

• by jacquesm on 10/29/14, 10:48 AM

  Very hard to compare two worlds (mobile and 'immobile' computers) without taking into account that the one is brand new and people seem to want one (and there is a very large push to own the latest and greatest) and the other is simply mature technology that works until the hardware dies. It's obvious you're going to sell more of things that sit in peoples pockets that replaced their previous phone, something they were doing with some regularity before smartphones appeared.

  Smartphones and tablets are interesting, they may enable new applications, they take over some of the functionality of desktops and laptops but it's more of a continuum than a very strong difference, you go from small and on your person to phablets (what a word), tablets, laptops, touch screen all-in-one PCs, regular PCs all the way to servers.

  So mobile simply completed the spectrum and as long as there is a fashion element to it they'll be sold in very large numbers (the fact that the batteries die is another push to upgrade them, ditto laptops).

  In the longer term it will slow down a bit but mobile phones will always be sold in larger numbers than desktop computers because of these reasons.

  There is one way in which 'mobile is eating the world', which is in terms of resources consumption, and that is going to be a real problem without better and more structured ways of thinking about disposing phones during the design phase as well as some kind of rebate program.

• by forgotAgain on 10/29/14, 1:11 PM

  Its worth it to keep in mind that A&H are in the business of selling investors on their investment ideas. This is a marketing piece not a technology piece.

• by api on 10/29/14, 2:34 AM

  Don't disagree with the market numbers, but there's a problem with mobile. It is best illustrated by the fact that I csnnot develop a mobile app on a mobile device.

  There won't be any "convergence" until mobile OSes are uncrippled.

  I personally see a three device ecosystem. Mobile will cut into PC on the low end, but it's really growing into a space not served by PC or server. Computing in general is expanding.

• by LVB on 10/29/14, 4:45 AM

  I don't get the "Tech Brands Are Huge" slide, specifically the comparison to the same companies in 2004. Wouldnt you compare to the top four tech companies at the time (MSFT, AOL, whatever) to demonstrate that the share of global brand value in tech is much higher now?

• by mark_l_watson on 10/29/14, 2:51 AM

  I have been hoping for a world where developers and content creators produced reactive HTML 5 web apps that worked beautifully on all devices from phones to laptops to large screen desktops and TVs.

  An analogy: writing and production tools have been getting better with output to PDF, Kindle, iBook, and print books. The overhead for creativity decreases so more effort goes to producing great content. This is what I would like for interactive web applications.

  There is a lot of niche content and special interests and there will continue to be a wide range of devices. Lots very inexpensive phones in developing countries and a wide range of devices upscale. Content providers and application developers should have access to all users, world wide, with low development overhead.

• by ck2 on 10/29/14, 10:25 AM

  Mobile is how I know I am old.

  After 5 minutes on a iphone or android phone I am like f* this give me a damn desktop.

• by marknutter on 10/29/14, 1:11 AM

  Mobile is not the future. We're in that future right now, and it's largely stabilized. I fully believe VR is the future. Anyone who's tried the Oculus and who has even an ounce of entrepreneurial imagination would agree. Just like when the iPhone came out in '07, the right convergence of technology has made it possible for truly convincing VR to make it into the mainstream. It will revolutionize gaming, commerce, socialization, productivity, and more. Those who understand this are already skating towards that puck. Everyone else is fighting over the few remaining scraps that the mobile table has to offer.

• by hownottowrite on 10/29/14, 1:16 AM

  Actually, we are eating the world.

  http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population%20of%20the%2...

• by wslh on 10/29/14, 1:35 PM

  The problem is the definition of mobile. Mobile seems to be more like a form factor than an operating system. If at the end I can convert a tablet into a full featured PC (i.e Microsoft Surface running Visual Studio) or I can plug a future mobile phone to a keyboard and monitor and run Microsoft Office there then there is no division between mobile, desktop PC, and web.

• by joshrael on 10/30/14, 2:24 PM

  I'm not sure I understand the "three phases of technology deployment" slide. Specifically, I can't think of a good example of a company that writes a check to buy technology (or the analogy to a plant on the following slide). Are these three types of companies distinct?

• by lnanek2 on 10/29/14, 1:14 AM

  Did a double take at the "Glass is eating the world" slide before finally realizing they were talking about LCDs and not Google's failed wearable.

• by ddbb01 on 10/28/14, 11:53 PM

  Technology gets cheaper and easier to use - a consistent story over time. Interestin stats.

• by chevas on 10/29/14, 5:09 PM

  I doubt this presentation was created on a mobile device.

• by fanssex on 10/29/14, 5:35 AM

  probably because PCs had already eaten the world

• by lazylizard on 10/29/14, 3:30 AM

  but batteries?

• by sstas on 10/28/14, 11:37 PM

  Hmm, Good Information ...

• by maxsavin on 10/29/14, 7:54 AM

  I saw Eric Schmidt's quote "By the summer of 2012, the majority of the televisions you see in stores will have Google TV embedded" and stopped there.