“U.S. Taking the Lead in Mobile”, Says Nokia CEO

In the past few weeks, I've told several groups of mostly skeptical people that I thought the US was pulling ahead in mobile. Well, now the Nokia CEO is saying the same thing.

Our reasons are actually similar, though expressed differently. I see two types of companies playing in the mobile space: those dominated by Telco thinking, and those dominated by Internet thinking. And Apple, which is dominated by Jobs thinking.

The Telco style companies are worried about systems working across all devices and networks, about reliability, about not taking the network down. Companies include the operators, most manufacturers, and Microsoft and Motricity/Infospace.

The Internet style companies are worried about providing cool services, and if it goes just to a couple devices that's okay. Streaming video is cool, and who cares about battery life or network congestion. Companies include most Silicon Valley startups.

Yahoo and Google ??? and Little Springs Design ??? try hard to have a foot in each camp. And are succeeding.

The Internet style companies are providing the majority of the innovation in wireless, as well as most of the mistakes. We help them fix their mistakes (hopefully before they've made them).

Internet style companies are concentrated in the U.S. especially Silicon Valley; Telco thinking is predominant in Europe. Yes, these are sweeping generalizations, and there are plenty of counter examples, even within a single company.