The PC is shifting from tethered personal productivity and document management toward mobile collaborative productivity, interpersonal communications, and media collection sharing & management. The phone is shifting toward mobile interpersonal communications and awareness, coordination and notification, as well as media playback, recording, and "squirting".
It's going to take a new breed of software and services to get us from here, to there. Software born into a new era - designed specifically to emphasize media, communications and mobility.
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Let me ask the following simple question with regard to synchronization: How many copies of your Contacts do you have? Did your phone come with a "sync cable" and a CD with a program that enables you to "sync your contacts with your email program"? That's an afterthought. Somebody designed the phone's firmware, and then said "OK, how do I get contacts into this thing?"
How could it be different if "contact mobility" weren't an afterthought? Well, think about it: your phone is connected to a network. Why aren't your phone's contacts automatically synchronized through the "cloud" with your PC, which is also ultimately connected to the same cloud? Why does your phone's display not automatically show your next appointment or meeting, being connected to that same "cloud"? And so on.
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What will it be like to build applications for a world in which mobility is of primary importance? The three principal dimensions that must be considered are usage mobility and infrastructure mobility and participant mobility.
