During a graduate school entrepreneurship class, my classmates and I were challenged to come up with an idea for a mash-up or venture without describing it as “a website for (fill in the blank).” What I believe our professors were trying to teach us was that when forming an idea, you shouldn’t anchor yourself to a specific platform. These platforms are never in a state of rest, and right now there is a large shift occurring from traditional computing to mobile computing. As the mobile platform continues to increase its usage share, entrepreneurs should be keeping the opportunities provided by mobile at the forefront of their minds.

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The numbers behind the growth of mobile usage are absolutely staggering. Consider the data compiled by Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley this April showing the comparative growth of mobile and desktop Internet. The iPhone and iPod Touch, which have been around for almost three years now, have roughly 85 million users. At the same point in their histories, Netscape and America Online (AOL) had just 18 million and 8 million users, respectively.

In other words, the mobile Internet revolution ignited by the iPhone has grown over 10 times faster than AOL, and nearly 5 times as fast as Netscape. In her report Meeker also estimates that the number of mobile Internet users will surpass desktop Internet users in just two years. But there are more reasons than research projections to be excited about mobile, so here are a few.

Location

One of the biggest advantages mobile devices have over desktops is their ability to go anywhere. Desktop computing experiences can now be modified and expanded to include location-based features on mobile devices, and best of all, location has gone social. With Foursquare and Gowalla battling for the check-in throne, Twitter implementing geodata into its meta-data, and Facebook rumored to be dabbling in location features, there are millions of people embracing location technology on the social Web.

Other technologies like augmented reality are pushing devices to their limits and providing truly unique and engaging location-based experiences. Advertising platforms are beginning to use location awareness to provide localized ads, but there is still plenty of room for development in this and other location-based avenues.

Google made an interesting statement regarding location last week when introducing Google Places. According to the search leader, one of every five Google searches is related to location. Just think about that.

New Consumer Habits

The proliferation of online marketplaces selling applications on smartphones has created a new culture based around making purchases on mobile devices. Not only are people more willing to spend $.99 on an app they’ve never tried before simply because it looks cool, they are willing to have a wider selection of apps on their device that they use regularly.

I can count the number of desktop applications that I use daily on one hand, but the number of iPhone apps I depend on each day is much higher. Part of the reason the next version of the iPhone OS will include folders is that users have tons of apps they need to use each day, and they want more without all the clutter and hassle. Mobile apps have bred a new type of consumer that will pay for what was once free, and a new type of application user that will keep more regularly used apps on their phones than on their desktops.

It’s Where the Kids Are

I got my first cell phone halfway through high-school. Today, it’s not uncommon to see third graders with their own phones texting away with their friends. A recent study from Pew found that text messaging is the favored method of communication by teens, surpassing cell phone calls and face-to-face conversations. More telling, however, is that mobile communication is more popular than activities traditionally used on desktop computers, such as instant messaging, social networks and, of course, email.

Kids these days are growing up with iPads, iPhones, Android phones, PSPs and other portable devices as a standard for their perspective on technology, and that’s their baseline. The next generation of early tech adopters is not going to like power cords, mice, and anything else they can’t use without remaining sedentary.

These are just a few of the many reasons why the mobile platform is growing and why entrepreneurs should pay serious attention to the possibilities that growth presents. This is not to say that desktop Internet applications are useless, in fact the opposite is true. There is still plenty of audience for these types of products, especially those that can inter-operate with a mobile version, but the rapid expansion occurring in the mobile sector makes it a ripe market for development.

Move the mobile industry forward with The ReadWriteWeb Team! These and other hot mobile topics such as the merits of native vs web based mobile apps will be discussed and debated at the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 with you and other industry luminaries in Mountain View, CA on May 7. See our announcement post for more details or register now.

If you’re a company in the Mobile Internet market, you may be interested in becoming a sponsor for this event. Please contact our COO Sean Ammirati for more information about sponsor packages. And a big thank-you to our current event sponsors: CallFire, WorldMate, Alcatel-Lucent and Ipevo.

Photos by Flickr users topgold, PictureYouth and William Hook.

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In preparation for the upcoming ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit, we’re outlining the 10 leading trends of the Mobile Web in a 3-part series of posts. In this the final instalment, we look at three markets for mobile which promise to be hugely valuable: commerce, cloud computing and health. As a reminder, in Part 1 we covered design and development issues and in Part 2 we looked at trending mobile apps such as geo-location and AR.

We’ll explore these and other trends with you at the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit, a 1-day event we’re running on Friday 7 May, in Mountain View, California. That’s the day after Web 2.0 Expo (2-6 May), so we hope you’ll extend your trip to the West Coast to help us define the future of mobile! To be certain of getting a ticket, we invite you to register now.

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Commerce

As more and more consumers use smart phones, how can businesses utilize this channel? That’s one question we will analyze at the RWW Mobile Summit. Consider these statistics: nearly one quarter of the mobile web, according to a recent report from mobile search engine Taptu, is made up of shopping and services.

Taptu surveyed about 326,000 sites that are optimized for touch-screen browsing and found that the largest concentration of these sites falls into Taptu’s “shopping and services” category. In total, Taptu found 83,000 mobile-enabled commerce sites, ranging from mobile shopping assistants to banks and mobile real estate sites.

According to Taptu, mobile shopping and services sites make up close to 25% of all mobile-friendly sites in the company’s index, followed by sites in the “photo and design” category (17.7%). Social sites rank third with 9.2%.

In a recent report, Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker Meeker claimed that mobile will revolutionize e-commerce. She cited location-based services, push notifications, transparent pricing, and instant mobile delivery as four potential areas where this will occur.

Mobile advertising is also a growing segment. In November, Google acquired AdMob, a mobile display ad serving platform, for $750 million. In January Apple acquired Quattro, a relatively unknown mobile advertising network, for an estimated $275 million. Later in January, Opera bought AdMarvel. In April, Apple announced an advertising platform called iAd.

Cloud Computing

According to a recent study from Juniper Research, the market for cloud-based mobile applications will grow 88% from 2009 to 2014. The market was just over $400 million this past year, says Juniper, but by 2014 it will reach $9.5 billion. Driving this growth will be the adoption of the new web standard HTML5, increased mobile broadband coverage and the need for always-on collaborative services for the enterprise.

Explained ReadWriteWeb’s Sarah Perez in February, "there are already a few well-known mobile cloud apps out there including Google’s Gmail and Google Voice for iPhone. When launched via iPhone homescreen shortcuts, these apps perform just like any other app on the iPhone, but all of their processing power comes from the cloud."

Health

Mobile health applications will play a large and important role in shaping the future of the health care system, wrote Mike Kirkwood at the mHealth initiative conference in February. He wrote that mobile and wireless health applications "directly impact the individual’s health and have the promise of ensuring that when a patient leaves a doctor visit, they don’t become “lost” in the system. It allows consumers to be engaged with health and wellness in their daily lives and connect back to their health care provider."

It’s not just from within the health system where mobile services will change health care, it’s also in the applications that consumers are downloading to their smart phones. In February I surveyed the latest health and fitness apps on the iPhone platform. For example, an iPhone app called Diamedic allows diabetics to record their blood sugar levels and insulin doses.

Top 10 Mobile Trends of 2010:
- Part 1: Design & Development
- Part 2: Apps, Apps, Apps

We’d love to discuss these and other mobile topics with you at our ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010. See our announcement post for more details.

If you’re a company in the Mobile Internet market, you may be interested in becoming a sponsor for this event. Please contact our COO Sean Ammirati for more information about sponsor packages. And a big thank-you to our current event sponsors: CallFire, WorldMate, Alcatel-Lucent and Ipevo.

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What a better way to welcome our newest writer at ReadWriteStart than to have the fortune of showcasing her work in the ReadWriteStart Weekly Wrapup? Turns out that Audrey Watters was responsible for writing all of this week’s top posts – quite a way to get things started! This week we discus the future of mobile trends, advice for and by entrepreneurs, elevator pitches, data visualization and the check-in wars!

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Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends: The Future is Mobile

Internet analyst Mary Meeker from Morgan Stanley presented a report on Internet trends at Events@Google yesterday. Echoing those trends identified in her 2009 presentation, the report focuses on the rapid and continued growth of the mobile internet and social networking. Claiming that the world has entered the fifth major technology cycle, Meeker predicts that this cycle will be marked by the adoption of mobile Internet technologies, as the trends of “3G + Social Networking + Video + VoIP + Impressive Mobile Devices” converge. Meeker predicts the mobile Internet will be bigger than desktop in five years, noting that by comparing iPhone and iPod touch versus AOL and Netscape users, that mobile Internet is ramping up at a rate far faster than desktop did. Furthermore, she argues that 3G coverage has reached a global inflection point, meaning it is available to at least 20% of the world’s cellphone users.

Entrepreneurs Under 30: Advice From Your Peers

Although the median age of CEOs is 54, one of the fasted growing demographics of entrepreneurs is young people. According to a survey by JA Worldwide almost three-quarters of high school students indicate an interest in becoming entrepreneurs. Although there are a few college programs dedicated to entrepreneurship, even with the preparation from a college degree program many young entrepreneurs can flounder.

To help remedy this, Under30CEO.com has collected advice from its users and offers “Young Entrepreneur Advice: 100 Things You Must Know!”

The Art of the Elevator Pitch: 10 Great Tips

The elevator door opens. And there stands your ideal investor. It’s the chance of a lifetime. But that chance only lasts as long as the elevator ride – you have less than a minute to make an impression. Hopefully, you’ve got a well-crafted elevator pitch ready to give.

The elevator pitch is not the hurried presentation of a full-blown business plan. It’s an introduction, an overview and a pitch – and a short one at that – meant to capture the attention of a potential investor. Of course, an elevator ride is a short one. Guides for elevator speeches that say you have one minute surely overestimate the amount of time it takes for an elevator to move from floor to floor. Of course, an elevator speech isn’t restricted to elevators. Rather, it comes in handy for any occasion where a concise presentation is appropriate.

Visualize Big Data with Flowing Media

As a recent article in The Economist observed, we are at the point of an “industrial revolution of data,” with vast amounts of digital information being created, stored and analyzed. The rise of “big data” has led in turn to an increased demand for tools to both analyze and visualize the information. This bodes well for startups tackling the field.

One new service is Flowing Media, the new company of Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg, a consultancy focused on data visualization services.

Startups and Early Adopters: “Checking In” on Conventional Wisdom

The popular location-based services Foursquare and Gowalla were launched at the 2009 SXSW, and one year later, many proclaimed the 2010 SXSW to be the year of “location, location, location”. With almost 350,000 Foursquare check-ins during one day of the event, and with numerous location-based services launching before, during, and after SXSW, the buzz among early adopters surrounding location-based social networking seems to show no signs of abating.

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Internet analyst Mary Meeker from Morgan Stanley presented a report on Internet trends at Events@Google yesterday. Echoing those trends identified in her 2009 presentation, the report focuses on the rapid and continued growth of the mobile internet and social networking. Claiming that the world has entered the fifth major technology cycle, Meeker predicts that this cycle will be marked by the adoption of mobile Internet technologies, as the trends of “3G + Social Networking + Video + VoIP + Impressive Mobile Devices” converge. Meeker predicts the mobile Internet will be bigger than desktop in five years, noting that by comparing iPhone and iPod touch versus AOL and Netscape users, that mobile Internet is ramping up at a rate far faster than desktop did. Furthermore, she argues that 3G coverage has reached a global inflection point, meaning it is available to at least 20% of the world’s cellphone users.

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While the trends Meeker identifies in her report will be familiar to ReadWriteWeb readers, it is worth considering how some of what she observes might impact startups, providing opportunities for new business ventures.

Mobile E-Commerce: Not only is mobile increasingly the method by which users are accessing the Internet, Meeker contends that mobile will revolutionize e-commerce, forcing both innovations for both online and brick-and-mortar companies. She identifies location-based services, push notifications, transparent pricing, and instant mobile delivery as four potential areas this will occur.

Virtual Goods: The success of Tencent, with over $2 billion in sales of virtual goods in China, demonstrates the potential for this area, Meeker argues

Applications: Noting the success of both Facebook and Apple in the app market, what Meeker labels as “vibrant developer / application platform ecosystems, ” she suggests that companies will continue to leverage social networks for fans and for revenue.

Video: Meeker’s research points to video as outpacing VoIP and other resources people seek to access with their mobile devices.

Look to Japan: Meeker points to the Japanese social networking site Mixi, who has seen its mobile page views increase from 17% of total views three years ago to 72% today.

It is clear that social networks and mobile Internet will continue to play a huge role in shaping the future of technology and business development.

The full version of Meeker’s presentation is available on Scribd, thanks to Mathew Ingram from GigaOm.

Don’t miss the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit on May 7th in Mountain View, California! We’re at a key point in the history of mobile computing right now – we hope you’ll join us, and a group of the most innovative leaders in the mobile industry, to discuss it. Register now »

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Patrick Pichette joined Google as its CFO on August 12, 2008, and since then, he’s seen the company through both good times (a stock price of $620 per share) and bad (try $262).  So Google fans should find it comforting that Pichette, with his range of experience, has said the company’s doing quite well again.

Pichette spoke during the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, and according to John Letzing, stated, "[T]he mood at Google kind of continues to be electric," which is certainly a positive sign.  Not that he’d admit to low morale, but using the term "electric" says a lot.

The CFO then continued, "It’s true there is a recession out there, but for the broad data world, everything that’s the data space, there’s really no recession.  It’s been a great time for us in the last 12 months, 18 months."

Pichette also shrugged off the idea that Google’s being anticompetitive, arguing that large companies are often scrutinized, and acknowledged that display ads, apps, and mobile have become increasingly important to the organization.

Here’s the only catch: investors may or may not be impressed by all this, considering that Google’s stock is down a little in after-hours trading at $532.30.

Patrick Pichette joined Google as its CFO on August 12, 2008, and since then, he’s seen the company through both good times (a stock price of $620 per share) and bad (try $262).  So Google fans should find it comforting that Pichette, with his range of experience, has said the company’s doing quite well again.

Pichette spoke during the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, and according to John Letzing, stated, "[T]he mood at Google kind of continues to be electric," which is certainly a positive sign.  Not that he’d admit to low morale, but using the term "electric" says a lot.

The CFO then continued, "It’s true there is a recession out there, but for the broad data world, everything that’s the data space, there’s really no recession.  It’s been a great time for us in the last 12 months, 18 months."

Pichette also shrugged off the idea that Google’s being anticompetitive, arguing that large companies are often scrutinized, and acknowledged that display ads, apps, and mobile have become increasingly important to the organization.

Here’s the only catch: investors may or may not be impressed by all this, considering that Google’s stock is down a little in after-hours trading at $532.30.

Morgan Stanley has released a couple of bulky documents about the mobile Internet: ‘The Mobile Internet Report,’ a 424-page report which explores eight major themes; and ‘The Mobile Internet Report Key Themes,’ a 659-slide presentation that drills down on thoughts covered in the report. We’ve embedded both documents below.

Perhaps the most remarkable statement in the report is that the Mobile Internet market will be "at least 2x size of Desktop Internet," which Morgan Stanley bases on analysis comparing Internet users with mobile subscribers.

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The report starts out by saying that Apple’s iPhone/iTouch/iTunes ecosystem "may prove to be the fastest ramping and most disruptive technology product / service launch the world
has ever seen." It goes on to state that "a handful of incumbents (like Apple, Google, Amazon.com and Skype) appear especially well positioned for mobile changes."

Growth in the Mobile Internet is being driven by 3G adoption and the increasing popularity of smartphones, of which the iPhone is the leader in terms of Web traffic. Morgan Stanley predicts that smartphones "will out-ship the global notebook + netbook market in 2010E and out-ship the global PC market (notebook + netbook + desktop) by 2012E."

The firm has always been bullish on mobile Internet, as Mary Meeker’s Web 2.0 conference presentations over the years show. See also our analysis of Meeker’s 2009 Web 2.0 presentation.

The reports are far too big to summarize here, so we recommend you read them below – or download from Morgan Stanley’s website.

See also: Top 5 Web Trends of 2009: Mobile Web & Augmented Reality and Top 10 Mobile Web Products of 2009

Via Scribd

Via Scribd

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