Mobile world domination — who wins?

The coming months in the world mobile market will be very (VERY) exciting! 2005 estimates put the number of mobile phone users at 2 billion. That amount is probably safe to put at 3 billion today. This figure is expected to grow more in the coming year and everyone is watching as things unfold.

Major markets like US, China, Europe, India will highly depend on what services that are going to be offered to consumers in order to really benefit from the mobile communications technology that is fast evolving.

One key aspect that I am very interested is the “opening up” of the mobile phone industry. The key players would have to realize that the “closed door” policy will never work if we are to enter into a new level of mobile communications.

There have been major developments into the “open policy” direction. For instance, the recent announcement of Verizon to open its mobile network is a great step into that direction.

Another major development is the entry of Google into the mobile arena. I believe that Google, based on it’s business model, is very determined and committed in the “open policy” direction. The release of the open mobile platform, Android, will not only benefit the US mobile industry but also potentially other market areas as well.

For instance, China who is nearing the 1 billion mobile phone users mark and have several local phone manufacturers will benefit in an open mobile platform. The Android platform can be used to provide a single means of delivering services and mobile software that can be very well supported by an open community of developers and service providers.

Google can greatly accelerate the “open access policy” in the US market if they win the 700Mhz spectrum bidding in the US this coming January. Another way things can accelerate is if Google buys Sprint. From a capitalization perspective, Google has the money and reason to do it.

Google and Sun clashing on Java is a non-issue. Java has been forked in the past. Look at gnu java — the natively compiled version of Java. I believe that even Sun knows that if Android succeeds in creating a major following, Sun stands to benefit in a major way (being the real owners of Java). I don’t think Google’s interests lies in whether Java is controlled by them or by Sun. Google is interested in making it open and accessible and is actually giving the Java platform a much needed push to the next level.

What’s left is Europe. With Nokia being a major player and having Symbian it would be nice to see how these things play out.

At the end of all these, there is really only one winner here. The sooner that the open access policy gets adopted the better services and businesses will be available. And the winner can only be us, the consumer.