

Mobile Economics Will Trend Toward Web Economics - brlewis
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/12/mobile-economics-will-trend-toward-web-economics.html

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bretpiatt
Reading this makes me think back and draw parallels to the Internet boom and
compare that to our current mobile boom.

Is it possible that Apple (Mobile) = AOL (Internet)?

\--Walled gardens

\--Curated content

\--Centralized control

For a while there AOL looked unstoppable, much as Apple does now. Can Apple
navigate the errors that AOL made? I'm not certain, but I'm also not certain
enough they'll mess it up that I want to go short $AAPL with some 5 year out
options either.

~~~
pyre
I don't know. I think that Apple has their 'shit together' a lot more than AOL
ever did. I don't know if the parallel between them fully applies. Though it's
very possible that the 'fall of Apple' is that their success has always been
reliant on the leadership of Steve Jobs. Without him (death, retirement, etc),
the ship might be sunk.

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nhangen
I think this whole debate is curtailed by a misleading metaphor.

Yes, certain parts of the web are free...these are the ubiquitous and dominant
pieces, like Google, Twitter, Facebook, and news sites, etc.

Then you have SaaS, which is smaller on an individual scale, but makes up a
large portion of the overall web economy.

Most games aren't free.

Some of my favorite pieces of software cost me money every month.

Are we talking freemium here? I can't really tell because the argument, to me,
seems generalized.

Just yesterday on HN, there was a post about a fun project called
threewords.me - it blew up because it was free and built to go viral on
Facebook. That type of thing will probably always be free, either as an ad-
supported simple product, or a feature of a more expensive paid product.

I have a hard time believing that mobile will be free when much of the web is
still not.

The reason magazine apps aren't doing well is because they're complicated, and
I can pull up wired.com and read almost everything I need to, from the same
device, so an app is useless in that context.

Other pieces of software, which might not exist outside of mobile, have much
more value to me, and I'm willing to pay for that value.

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cmoscoso
One day perhaps, when you can run games on a mobile browser.

Otherwise, what killer web apps will make that happen?

~~~
johnrob
Games have a tradition of being paid for, so they don't really apply to this
argument.

~~~
nhangen
Actually, look through Fred's archives and you'll see that he's lumped in
games as well.

I happen to disagree. As a consumer, I would rather pay $60 for an xbox game
than get it free and get nickel and dimed my way to $60 over the long-term.
Same with something like Angry Birds. I'll pay my 1.99 for the HD version and
be done with it.

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achompas
I agree with Wilson's viewpoint except for one problem: inadvertent ad clicks
are much more likely on mobile devices than they are on computer browsers.

This must inflate click-thru rates and deflate return on advertising, and I
suspect that mobile advertising rates are inflated right now because of this.

