The Two-Foot Putt

In recent months, Research in Motion (RIM), maker of the BlackBerry, and Apple, maker of the iPhone, launched dueling mobile software venture funds. Both are bold statements at a time when the venture industry is downsizing and credit markets are convulsing. The former is a $150m fund, the latter $100m - up from an announced $50m. That's a $250m bet on the future of mobile software.

You might point out that $250m is spit in the ocean for RIM ($81b market cap), Apple ($156b market cap), or the venture industry ($29b in total funding in 2007). And you'd be right. But the message it's sending is clear: if ever there was a clarion call to mobile entrepreneurs and engineers, this is it. Consider this: in the past month alone, the BlackBerry Bold, BlackBerry Thunder, 3G iPhone, and Samsung Instinct - all high-end smartphones targeting business users - were announced (or leaked in the case of the Thunder).

We often think tech trends can only be identified in retrospect. This is a rare case when a massive opportunity is bearing down on us like a Mack truck. The signs are everywhere - in newspapers and on TV, in consumer and enterprise purchasing behaviors, and of course in the blogosphere. The unique thing about mobile software is that anyone watching the space knew years ago it would take off yet all of us were wrong about when. Why? We assumed the technology and market conditions present now would be present by about 2003.

We've seen the wireless industry go through ups and downs over the years but there's never been an up like this. According to M:Metrics, smartphone users now spend an average of four hours and 38 minutes per month browsing the mobile web. That's up 89% year over year. Page views are up 127%. According to Paul Carton, research director at industry analyst ChangeWave, "IT budget constraints aren't loosening up anytime soon yet IT leaders are shelling out big-time for [BlackBerrys] despite tightening budgets." Who would have thought when wireless was panned as all sizzle and no bacon as recently as last year that it would keep the IT economy out of a recession?

At a meta level, the real driver here is that computing innovation finally shifted from the PC to mobile platform. It's widely-acknowledged that the shift will be complete when our dominant computing environment is a handheld device and we only use tethered machines for tasks handhelds can't do (creating CAD drawings, for instance). Today, it's easy to consume information on mobile devices but it's a pain to produce it. With the advent of better mobile applications, better text-input technology, and more flexible application design tools, it's only a matter of time before that changes. When it does, the race to mobile-centric computing will be on.

It's obvious where wireless is headed because we've seen it all happen before - first when mainframe apps moved to client-server architectures then when client-server migrated to the web. Most important, we learned what not to do when first-generation mobile applications failed in 2000-2005. We know exactly what applications and infrastructure are missing. It's an uncontested layup. A two-foot putt. No need for Tiger here. Someone call Happy Gilmore. The wireless industry is about to produce the next many Microsoft/Cisco/eBay/Google tech success stories. Here are three opportunities someone will exploit to earn a place on that list:

• Mobile cross-platform collaboration
• VPN security for non-BlackBerry smartphones
• Text input for touch-based handsets