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In-Brief: Nokia addresses an exclusive gathering of 100 mobile execs; discusses open platforms and the profound impact on the  user interface (UI). Brace yourself for a tectonic shift in mobile devices, mobile social networks - and the mobile industry.

Last week I was pleased to attend an under-the-radar event in Silicon Valley: a gathering of 100 wireless executives and entrepreneurs who met informally to envision the next stages in the industry’s evolution. The meeting, held at Nokia’s new research center in Palo Alto, Calif., and sponsored by the Executive Forum of the Telecom Council of Silicon Valley, was called Nokia Predictions 2008.

The messages that came out of this meeting were far reaching and, I believe, will be of interest to readers at MSG.  The event was also a choice opportunity to hear what’s occupying the thinking of Bob Iannucci, Nokia’s CTO and head of Nokia Research Center. He became CTO just this month.

Two themes prevailed that evening. One was the industry’s evolution to a new set of values based on software and services, and the other was the emergence of a new “open” mindset in the industry.

While not introduced as such, the themes reflect two important developments in the wireless industry from last year: Nokia’s move to re-invent itself as a software and services company and the industry’s cautious willingness to find ways to offer a more “open” service environment, motivated in large part by Apple, with its iPhone, and Google, with its initiative to create Android, an open mobile software platform.

Believing the new age of “openness” is real and inevitable, Iannucci predicted that within five years the industry will move to a standardized platform of one kind or another that will create more software compatibilities across different types of devices, just as the computing industry did in the 1980s when it created the personal computer, unleashing the software and services industry. “The laws of economics compel that to come into existence,” he said.

Iannucci predicted that this standardized platform will increase the value of mobile software and services (Nokia is no doubt banking on that) and he asserted that open-source software will play a profoundly important role in making it all happen. Though not offering any specifics, he suggested that the platform he envisions should be more open than Android (though it would logically never meddle with the RF layer, which must remain off-limits in order to protect the network). Watch for new competition to Android, in other words.

Iannucci predicted that the mobile phone user interface will also change drastically in the next five years. He said that the industry is on the verge of conquering the challenge to simplify the UI and that it will do this in a way that will also enable the phone to become a convenient and everyday gateway to all kinds of applications, even those that run on non-phone devices and peripherals such as sensors, monitors or printers.

Iannucci’s vision of this new UI was endorsed by another speaker at the event, Tara Lemmey, CEO of LENS Ventures and an expert on innovation. She predicted that a completely new UI, one that will have no relationship to those used in phones today, will become a new standard in the industry and that operating systems, too, will change so radically that many of the OSes that exist today will not even be around five years from now.

The term “open” is of course a subjective one and while handset makers will accept the use of open code in varying degrees, the leading manufacturers will continue to build phones that use Symbian, Windows Mobile, or BlackBerry OSes, analyst Andrew Seybold commented to me after the event. “They’ll build one of everything if that’s what people want,” he said.

Another expert whose perspective should be of interest to MSG readers is Matthew Rothenberg, a social technologist head of product strategy and management at Flickr.com, who spoke very briefly about social networking sites. He expects an implosion in this sector, caused by an over supply of sites and a desperate need for applications. A welcome development that may help many of these sites through this period is the ability to now use third-party applications, he commented. This is where the most innovation will occur, he believes, and it represents a very meaningful opportunity for developers.

“The most compelling social network applications will run on a social network site but not be built by that site,” he predicted.

• Posted in
• Mobile Research, Web 2.0, Mobile Social Networking, Mobile Content, Content Discovery

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