CEOs @ Davos: Adding Fuel to the Mobile Fire

Year of the mobile game? How about 'Year the Mobile Phone Takes Over?'. Movaya has been spending a lot of air time preaching about 2008 as the year mobile gaming really takes off. But, it may be that gaming is just one node of the mobile juggernaut that will be unleashed on the world in 2008. In fact, 2008 may be the year that the mobile platform becomes solidified as the top platform in the world for content, news and entertainment, surpassing the usage of TV, Internet and movies combined.

This past week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, there was a panel entitled 'The Future of Mobile Technology'. Panelists included Google (Public, NASDAQ:GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, Sony (Public, NYSE:SNE) CEO Sir Howard Stringer, NBC Universal (owned by General Electric) CEO Jeff Zucker, SK Telecom (Public, NYSE:SKM) CEO Kim Shin-Bae and China Mobile (Public, NYSE:CHL) CEO Wang Jianzhou.

Quotes and feedback that got us excited:
Schmidt on the 'tipping point' of mobile phone usage: "It's the recreation of the Internet, it's the recreation of the PC (personal computer) story and it is before us — and it is very likely it will happen in the next year"

Stringer thinks that mobile will be the “platform for everything”

NBC's Zucker was the only panel member with reservations, noting that mobile will not have a huge impact on NBC. This is not surprising, as members of the music, TV and movie industries are still reluctant to fully embrace digital content in any form. We call these firms dinosaurs.

China Mobile adds 6 million subscribers a month to its base of 317 Million. Note that this means China Mobile is adding the equal to ATT each year. Oh, and their market cap on the NYSE is over $300 billion USD now, trailing only GE and some oil companies in size. This means that, roughly, each subscriber is worth $1000 USD to China Mobile, and by the middle of 2009 they will be the worlds largest company.

Now, back to the business of selling mobile games and applications.