Group 3 - An interview with Vision Mobile :)
Hello everyone! Today we go head to head, toe to toe with Andreas Constantinou - Vision Mobiles Research Director.
Carl-Oscar: You sent us a bundle of very interesting information via the slides that you gave us, thanks again for that. I however would like to know what you are most excited about - what are you really looking forward to when it comes to the digital industy?
Andreas: As mobile industry observers, the most exciting phenomenon we see happening is the ‘genetic pairing’ of the mobile and Internet industries into a single one; this genetic pairing leads into ‘mutation’ rather than ‘convergence’. i.e. we see unexpected new value areas emerge at the crossroads of mobile and internet. The genetic pairing of mobile and internet industries lead to value erosion (e.g. software and hardware commoditisation), wiping off 10s of billions off the mobile handset market. At the same time, new value areas are being created anew like direct-to-consumer applications, app analytics and customer experience management. The industry in 2 years will evolve as much as it evolved in 2008-2010 with the introduction of Apple’s App Store. We ‘re still going to see many surprises in the next 2 years.
Carl-Oscar: In the slides you highlighted some key points of the open source community. Is Visionmobile involved in the community? If not - would you like to?
Andreas: As analysts we are observers to mobile open source communities; we study the economics of open source; for example how major software platforms (Symbian, Android, WebKit, Chrome, etc) use governance models that often antagonise the ethics of open source. In addition, we track the influencers in open source, i.e. the smaller companies that have established reviewers or maintainers within major projects (Torch Mobile is a good example, which was acquired by RIM).
Carl-Oscar: Some industry observers say that the current trend “mobile application” will be dead in the future, and be replaced by better working browsers - that we for example use today on our desktop/laptop computers e.g. the application would be imbedded into the browsers, just like “flash” is today. Do you think this is something that will happen?
Andreas: We see a multiplicity of runtimes, each with its own benefits - i.e. both native and browser-based runtimes - surviving well within the next 3 years. Each runtime has very different design goals and sweet spots - there is no design-once run-everywhere application like there is no design-once-apply-everywhere runtime. Google might want the world to consist of browsers (and Chrome is all about advancing the state of web development), but at the same time there are some pretty smart people working at Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and all the other companies supporting different runtimes. It’s all about diversity (the opposite side of the fragmentation coin) and diversity is the sign of a healthy ecosystem.
Carl-Oscar: Where is Visionmobile in 5 years time? Is it just about mobiles?
Andreas: VisionMobile should be ConnectedVision in five years :) i.e. analysing the industry of connected devices, people and places :)
Carl-Oscar: What “key” skills are you looking for when you hire people today? What is that little extra that you look for when hiring people?
Andreas: our tagline since our inception has been “knowledge. passion. innovation.” and this reflects in the people we work with. We look for industry insiders with passion, creative flair and unconventional out-of-the-box thinking.
Carl-Oscar: Have you heard of Hyper Island before? If not, would you like to? If you have, would you like to come and give us a lecture in Sweden, Karlskrona? We are very excited about Visionmobile!
Andreas: yes, sounds like a great idea. We work with many companies in the Skane area, so hope we can make this happen :)
Thanks a bunch to the guys at Vision Mobile, really good answers - I at least can register with a lot what Andreas says, and would like him to come and visit us at Hyper Island.
If you want more visions from Vision Mobile - yes am a poet, go and visit: visionmobile.com/blog
For a more mobile future!
Regards,
Group 3
