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Robin is an innovator and entrepreneur. 1st prize winner in the Calling All Innovators competition 2009 in the Internet Innovation category for TechBuzz widget which Robin wrote. He co-founded Mippin.com (then called Mobizines) in 2004 which won Forum Nokia developer of the year for 2006/7. He founded a new startup, Alibro Ltd in Oct 2009, as a vehicle to further EyeMags.com

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Robin Jewsbury's Forum Nokia Blog

An US centric view of Mobile by Marc Andressen
robin.jewsbury | 22 February, 2009 11:12

There is a really interesting interview with Marc Andressen on the web. There were two things in the interview which I struggled with. First he predicts the death of the print industry in favour of the Internet delivery and the other one was his glowing description of the iPhone.

Whilst I'd love it to come true I find it hard to believe that the print industry should close their presses and put all their effort into perfecting Internet delivery. But this certainly has made me think. What will it be like in 10 years time? I do think that devices which emulate the ease of reading on paper will be more prevalent (in fact the phone will will be that device). So in that sense a dramatic change for all forms of publishers (from brands down to bloggers) is about to happen, but I was shocked by the statement that the New York Times should close its presses now.

The other part of the interview which made me think was his description of the iPhone. He described it as the first phone to have a full operating system and said it had been beamed in from 5 years in the future. He mentioned RIM and Windows Mobile as other smart phones but did not mention Nokia or S60. Why? I find it quite frustrating that the American view of phones is so different from the rest of the world. Why is Symbian not viewed as a full operating system? He also described the developers eco-system round the iPhone as being a first too. I have a mixed feeling on this. Firstly, he seems to have ignored the fact that Symbian is as a full OS as the Unix on the iPhone. He ignored that its been possible to develop fully fledged applications for years on S60 and then sell them (allbeit through 3rd parties). However, Apple do currently seem to have a more complete end to end developer eco system which Nokia is now addressing with Ovi Publish. It is a shame that the US view of the world seems to have ignored the achievements of Europeans, but I guess we have to keep trying to get everything right.

Perhaps it will be Europe which gets the solutions to the print industry moving from paper to the Internet right.

Comments

Re: An US centric view of Mobile by Marc Andressen

korsun14 | 22/02/2009, 19:50

the first - the prediction is delirium on my mind, but the second - Iphone descr. is very good one!

Nokia, as a brand, is unknown over there

tote_b5 | 24/02/2009, 17:24

Robin,

Please try to look at this phenomenon from the other way around, too: why is Nokia, S60 and Symbian not well-known in North-America? It's not surprising that Americans recognize American brands first, but more importantly Nokia hasn't made a breakthrough in brand recognition on that continent yet. There are numerous reasons, guesses for that, let's hope, however, that with Symbian Foundation (with Bank of America, AT&T, Qualcomm and the likes) it will change.

Tote

looking both ways

coultonp | 25/02/2009, 14:59

Isn’t a lot of this to do with fact that the US has led and directed much of the computing industry since its inception and mobile has risen outside this market therefore many in the US are wrongly assuming they are leading the way with mobile. Personally I think we spend far to much time looking West and the East is potentially a lot more interesting for mobile.