Either the 'closed' cable-TV model will drive prime content, or the 'open' Web 2.0 model will do so, says Daniel Pacthod, a principal at McKinsey.
Pachthod, who moderated a panel discussion of mobility gurus from the Net and telco sectors at the Summit yesterday, says the digital content/services ecosystem currently stands at almost $2 trillion in revenue and that two-thirds of North American consumers with capable handsets have trialed gaming, music and video.
Sukhinder Singh-Cassidy from Google argued that neither model would predominate, as content would 'be driven market by market and operator by operator, depending on the capability of the handset.' She also warns against underestimating users' 'desire to experiment' with content, saying her firm was 'betting on a paradigm shift.'
Don Rae from PLDT says his company's biggest problem was the need for bandwidth and trans-oceanic cables, but 'how do we fund those investments and get ROI‾'
Jeremy Pink from CNBC Asia Pacific urged those predicting the future to 'study history,' especially recent net plays, and create rich proprietary content. 'As content providers, we cannot afford to be arrogant,' he says. Pink says his firm's content is 'phone platform-agnostic.'
Tero OjanperÅÂ from Nokia says that open platforms on mobile devices would create no division between the 'mobile Internet' and the Net as a whole, with music/gaming as the main driver. But he says that browsing-behavior differs on mobile devices, and simplicity for mobile Internet would be boosted by 'widgets' that take users directly to specific Net content.