Where the Growth Is

Fred Wilson, “Mobile Is Where The Growth Is”:

There is a significant shift going on this year, much more significant than we saw last year, from web to mobile. It is most noticeable in games, social networking, music, and news, but it is happening across the board and it presents both great opportunity and great challenges.

Mobile native services like Foursquare and Instagram have the most to gain from this transition. Big feature rich web apps like Facebook and Google have the most to lose from this transition.

A sea change is indeed underway, but Wilson either misses it or is being obtuse. Companies Wilson mentions: Microsoft, Google, RIM, Facebook, Yahoo. Not mentioned: Apple.

There’s no mystery here. We’re talking about two platforms: iOS and Android. (Microsoft is doing its best to join that party with Windows 8.) It’s not “mobile vs. the web”. The web is a huge part of what people do on iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. It’s post-PC vs. PC, in Apple’s parlance. Modern vs. traditional computing devices. Pretty much every instance of “mobile” could be replaced by “modern” in Wilson’s piece, and it would read better.

★ Monday, 2 July 2012