Is this the day Silicon Valley discovers it is 10 years behind Japan in pursuit of the MobCon?
Yesterday, Morgan Stanley Managing Director, Mary Meeker delivered her 15 minute “heads up” at the Web Summit 2.0 conference.
Since its release this 68 page presentation has become one of the hotter properties in the blogsphere.
In the presentation she suggests that the mobile web (i.e. the MobCon) will be 10 times bigger than the desktop web (i.e. Web 2.0). This of course is no surprise to anybody who has been tracking the progress of the mobcon here at excapite.
A copy of her presentation was posted on Techcrunch last night and Business Insider have released a cut down version this morning that focuses on the iPhone and Mobile Web slides.
The key highlights of the show can be found between pages 41-50 of the 68 page version (available on the Techcrunch site). In this section she demonstrates how
- The recent growth in the Web 2.0 Giants of Facebook and YouTube maps to the decline in the Web 1.0 Giant Portals (Yahoo! and MSN). (# 41)
- The “Walled Gardens” of the UK Mobile Portals are rapidly in decline (#46)
However of more immediate interest to followers of the MobCon are the 3 slides focusing on what is happening in Japan…
- Mobile Social Networking (# 44)
- Mobile Revenue Mix (#49)
- mCommerce Mix (#50)
These 3 slides are critical because they use Japan as a benchmark across key facets of the MobCon landscape to demonstrate what the future of the mobile web (i.e. The MobCon) represents to the US Market and, therefore to potential Technology Investors in Silicon Valley and Wall St.
They may well be just a Freudian slip but, from this side of the Pacific, these 3 slides are nothing less than a reconfirmation that the US is now playing MobCon catch up with Japan.
The simple fact is Japan began its investment in the MobCon back in 1999 and by 2007, when Apple first launched the iPhone, Japanese consumers were already spending over US$1000 per year on Mobile Commerce. Paying for goods using their mobile phones at retail outlets and personalising their phones with media rich content.
While the Rest of the World went eCommerce Japan invested in mCommerce
Today Japan continues to define the future of the MobCon landscape. They have already brought to market and commercialised all the ideas that the investors in Wall St and the Silicon Valley are now getting so excited about.
After all it was the Japanese consumer who originally redefined the Mobile Phone by turning it into a fashion accessory.
The only good news for Silicon Valley is that, although Japan is now 10 years ahead in the MobCon race, their technology is now so advanced it doesn’t work in the USA. So, unlike the much maligned US auto manufacturers, Silicon Valley will not be under siege from container loads of the cheaper and more technically advanced Japanese imports.
This gives Silicon Valley a significant window of opportunity.
The question is will they adopt a policy of a “Late to Market ME2″ and follow the Japanese roadmap, or will they wait a little longer, and catch the next disruptive wave of the information revolution in a bold bid for outright market leadership?
Innovation is more than brilliant ideas. It is also about your ability to execute brilliantly.
Further Reading
How Japan leveraged the MobCon to jump past Silicon Valley
