http://scobleizer.com/2009/07/09/eur...ion-in-mobile/

not sure if he is smoking something, overlooking something or is right on target...

To some extent, he is smoking.

For one, mobile isn't like other tech. Its not something that stays a matter of regional dominance. The US matters no more than any other region. In fact, if there is any region with mobile that he is totally overlooking its Africa. Its there where mobile app and tech is being pushed further and faster than other places. And that's not even including the fact that Japan and Korea are still way ahead of Europe and NAM on basic things like service, network performance and infrastructure.

Scoble is (like many in SV) infatuated with applications. There's nothing wrong with that. The ease at which Apple made that aspect of mobile relevant to users; and the way that Google has made Android appealing to developers, is indeed impressive. However, they serve such a small area of what "mobile" is that you can't make mountains out of molehills.

Should *some* areas of Europe feel threatened because the US has finally woken up in two areas? Probably. The UK doesn't speak for the entirety of the mobile culture of Europe any more that Silicon Valley speaks for the social networking culture of the US.

I would not expect companies like Nokia to appear slacking for long. And those places that Scoble missed (Korea w/LG and Samsung for instance) are the ones folks should be paying attention to. Not only are they doing solid things with hardware, but they are quietly learning the software and platform lessons, and applying them to areas within mobile that don't get as much attention, but have a lot more economic impact.

Smoking, mostly. While is *almost* managing to make a point, he successfully shoots himself in the foot with his 'what I find cool is what everybody finds cool and thus what is the future' attitude, completely disregarding the actual users all this high tech is supposed to be appealing to. Take the example of texting he mentions. Texting has long, LONG gone past the phase of a technological necessity, it's a cultural phenomenon, just like twitter. No matter how a super-duper 3D holographic phone you bring out, in Europe tens/hundreds of millions of people WILL want to text with it anyway.

He sounds like the kind of person who thinks "team america" is about how good America is?

The fact that he compares America to Europe shows his ignorance.

No we don't all speak European ;-)

Another iPhone fanboy. Nothing to see.

Smoking (something well past its use-by date). No one is "stuck using" anything - Europe gets the same models as the rest of the Western hemisphere. Some US-made ones may take a few months to arrive in Europe and vice versa, but that's normal. For the most part people have the handsets they want.

One thing he's missing is market maturity and saturation: everyone in Europe who was going to get a phone has already bought at least two in the last couple of years (look at the table at the bottom of http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUK21701809). Device X "isn’t getting London’s cool kids hot and bothered" because they've been hot and bothered a number of times before, got disappointed by the the reality of X vs its hype and eventually became pretty blasé about such things.

Another is that smartphones are still a niche market everywhere. Most people who buy a phone want just that, a device that doesn't cost an arm and a leg and does voice calls and SMS. So of course that's what he sees most people do with their phones, that's what they're for. The network effect is also a factor - even if your brand new all singing all swinging smartphone has a twitter app, most of your friends-family-colleagues' don't (and most of them have probably never heard of twitter or care about its existence).

Text is nothing, comments are even funnier

The statement "Europe no longer matters" has a point. There aren't that many European manufacturers left. But I think this wasn't his point.

icke

There never were "many" to begin with, and two of them are still in the top 5 worldwide. But it's also interesting to note that the only ones at the top that are gaining sales/market share are the platform-agnostic Koreans.

Thanks for the link. I like charts and graphs. It would be nice if they put the continent and region break down in the chart instead of burying it in the text. Isn't that Wolfram's job? Where is my internet hypercube, dammit? Oh, I also like databases and peanut butter.