Benedict Evans of Andreessen Horowitz asserts that “mobile is the future of technology and of the internet” in his year-end review 16 mobile theses.
A sample:
“We should stop talking about ‘mobile’ internet and ‘desktop’ internet – it’s like talking about ‘colour’ TV, as opposed to black and white TV. We have a mental mode, left over from feature phones, that ‘mobile’ means limited devices that are only used walking around. But actually, smartphones are mostly used when you’re sitting down next to a laptop, not ‘mobile’, and their capabilities make them much more sophisticated as internet platforms than PC. Really, it’s the PC that has the limited, cut-down version of the internet.”
The topics he covers are:
- Mobile is the new central ecosystem of tech
- Mobile is the internet
- Mobile isn’t about small screens and PCs aren’t about keyboards – mobile means an ecosystem and that ecosystem will swallow ‘PCs’
- The future of productivity
- Microsoft’s capitulation
- Apple & Google both won, but it’s complicated
- Search and discovery
- Apps and the web
- Post Netscape, post PageRank, looking for the next run-time
- Messaging as a platform, and a way to get customers
- The unclear future of Android and the OEM world
- Internet of Things
- Cars
- TV and the living room
- Watches
- Finally, we are not our users
Regarding search and discovery, Benedict says, “The internet makes it possible to get anything you’ve ever heard of but also makes it impossible to have heard of everything.”
We moved from browsing to search but today how do the iOS and Android platforms affect discoverability? Is there still room for curation? He ends with the age-old question: “How do you get users?”
Regarding the next ‘run-time’ he says,
“Really, we’re looking for a new run-time – a new way, after the web and native apps, to build services. That might be Siri or Now or messaging or maps or notifications or something else again. But the underlying aim is to construct a new search and discovery model – a new way, different to the web or app stores, to get users.”
Hear Benedict in this presentation.
My take: It’s been a dozen years since video first appeared on the Internet. Since then, the mediascape has been in transition. I admit I find it more faceted and confusing than ever. Benedict’s summary illustrates some of the fundamental shifts now taking place.