
The Second Smartphone Revolution - gwintrob
http://avc.com/2016/03/the-second-smartphone-revolution/
======
nostrademons
I don't believe we're done with the smartphone revolution in the U.S. either.
It's been 9 years since the iPhone came out. Where were we 9 years after NCSA
Mosaic came out? 2002. People thought we were done with the web revolution,
but most of the dominant web companies of today were either fledgling startups
(Google) or not invented yet (Facebook, YouTube, Kickstarter, AirBnB, etc.)

PG observed around 2005 that the web still had decades to go, because "social
changes take longer than technical changes". So it is with mobile. The low-
hanging fruit that can be picked simply by building an app and putting it on
the app store has already been taken, but there are still many big businesses
that will be built by people who are _in_ a niche and realize that problems
within that niche can be solved more effectively with the help of a mobile
app.

~~~
fredwilson
I agree and we are betting on that with the investments we've made in the past
four or five years since we stopped making broad horizontal investments

But I feel that even more dramatic upside is available in the less developed
world

~~~
brerlapn
This is even more true for social benefit companies. When I attended
Netsquared in 2008 it was immediately apparent that the products with the most
promise for developing countries were mobile products--for many in developing
countries mobile _is_ the internet. One of the exhibitors had built an SMS
service that farmers could text for commodity prices to determine when they
would go to market and prevent being undercut by middlemen. I'm sure that sort
of ingenuity will only be amplified with even low-end smartphone access.

------
jgalt212
Sure, there may be a ton of potential smart phone users outside of G-10. But
how much money can one make in these markets?

Not to be flip, and and the same time kick around Path, but they were huge in
Indonesia, but at the end of the day they represented a losing investment.

[https://pando.com/2014/05/22/paths-kiss-of-death-
compliment-...](https://pando.com/2014/05/22/paths-kiss-of-death-compliment-
its-hugely-popular-in-indonesia/)

------
zkirill
I think that in order to have a second smartphone revolution we need to look
beyond the mobile operating systems that we rely on today, none of which seem
optimal for the emerging markets (including Tizen and MIUI) considering the
expensive high end hardware that they target.

A hypothetical initial focus on supporting productivity and business
applications by a small team that could take this on could help narrow down
the list of hardware to support as the need to compete for the latest CPU or
the best video chip is reduced.

Also, I was wondering if Rust could be to a new mobile operating system what
Objective-C was to OS X and later iOS serving as a layer on top of C/C++.

------
michaelbuckbee
I'd vote the behaviors and form factor of what's described in the article are
all still "first wave".

What's coming is AR/VR tech - in particular: AR is what will become the next
big mobile platform.

~~~
creshal
AR was also supposed to be the driving factor of the first wave. Nintendo
invested not small amounts of money to make sure the 3DS was a decent AR
platform. Not that most of its users ever realized.

------
dredmorbius
I would look to models of existing / past technologies which have
proliferated.

As an example, the automobile is popular in the West, but it's the motorbike
which is family transport in much of the developing world.

I also expect 2nd wave tech will have to deal with higher (relative) costs,
less reliable networks, and data interchange. It's also not going to be
piggybacked on top of high-value advertising to a wealthy population, as in
the West.

------
surfmike
To some degree I feel like WhatsApp is/will be part of this second wave. It's
popularity mostly stems from users in developing countries.

------
contingencies
Two words: Mesh networking.

~~~
hinkley
The other day I found a blog post I made back in '04 about how mesh networking
was the wave of the future. Don't hold your breath man.

~~~
contingencies
I think underestimating the power of centralized telecommunications and
Google's trump card handing out Android with legal limitations on
manufacturers splitting from the default distro was an unforeseen and in
hindsight forgiveable oversight. Google is basically the problem.

~~~
hinkley
I would have said 'Comcast'. Too many people who will cut your service if they
think you're sharing it. Who are the border servers if your ISP can cut you
off?

