Mobile Panel at Web 2.0

The panelists inclide Trip Hawkins of Digital Chocolate, Russell Beattie, Jory Bell of OQO, and Juha Christensen (Psion, Symbian, Microsoft...) currently at Macromedia.

Russell -- "consumers are going to start realizing that they are carrying around little computers in their pocket..."

Trip -- "The voice business still dominates (the carrier's) thinking. But clearly the mobile phone is turning into a social computer. ...ways of connecting with your virtual village. But the carriers are like the gas station that has a convenience story and what they haven't grasped is that data is going to be the tail that wagged the dog... clearly the screen size is going to prevent this device from being used as a desktop computer would be used... but there are all of these ways that people can be helped in their mobile lifestyles."

Juha -- "one of the ways in which the phone is different from the PC is that the UI remains fairly static after you buy it as opposed to the PC which is vastly customizable. But this is changing, despite the battles between the manufacturers and the carriers for the control -- ultimately the users will be the ones that decide how their phones work."

Russell -- as a UI the reason SMS has been so successful on the phone is because it is so simple -- but this is not so different from the PC in fact the example would be Google -- SMS and Google are the same in the sense that you basically have one field and you fill that one box out and something valuable happens - in either environment (mobile or PC) simple is a key to broad succcess"

Jory -- "today we can put the entire Windows environment into a format that fits into your pocket, so why don't we put the entire think on phones, instead of worrying about all of these problems with bad UIs..."

Juha -- "by (200?) there will be 1.8 billion phone subscribers, this is not a market where one solution will fit all needs - I would argue that there is a divergence going on in the market, with a lot of innovation going on -- bigger devices, smaller screens, watches -- and many different user experiences."

Trip -- "computers in this (pointing to phone) form factor will outnumber PCs 10 to 1, just like the PC came into the enterprise... there will be billions of people carrying these devices..."

Russell -- (mobile phones will kill the ipod)