Have you noticed that whereever you are, at home, in public places, in office meetings, on the sidewalk, airplanes, the park; on the ski slope -- everyone is looking at the palm of their hand and a device that connects them to somewhere else? It is called the mobile revolution, welcome to tomorrow. I have mountains of statistics that we have gathered trying to understand this growing phenomenon, what does it mean to our way of life, and Oh by the way, how do we make money with this pervasive device. I always promise no statics, but just a few to set the stage for why there is a race of tech companies to understand this new economic engine which is going to change just about everything we do and be the big winner in this expanding arena.
•Current platforms: 6 billion mobile devices, equates to 87% of the world's population
•1.2 billion mobile app users in 2012 - anticipate 4.4 billion users by 2017
•Android user base increasing by 700,000 subscribers daily
•iOS user base increasing by 14% monthly
•2016- $24 billion will be spent on mobile advertising (which is the same amount as was spent on online advertising in 2011).
•Of the 7 billion planet population, 4.8 billion own a mobile phone - only 4.2 billion own a toothbrush
Sources: Wired PR Works, Digital Buzz, Infographic
When I was at the Innovation Summit in Silicon Valley last month one of the top companies from the mobile space was select and honored as a top 250 innovative company was Phunware, whose tag line is "everything you need to succeed on mobile."
Impressive Leadership: As experts in communications, networking, infrastructure, telephony, gaming and design, the company combines innovative, powerful technology with beautiful design to create unparalleled branded mobile experiences.
Alan S. Knitowski Chairman and CEO Was kind enough to set an hour in his busy day last week to share with me how he has built the leading company in the mobile space and helps developers, advertisers, and consumers be satisfied.
Alan is a successful serial entrepreneur with multiple post Internet and technology bubble exits to such companies as Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO), Level 3 Communications (NASDAQ: LVLT) and Internet Security Systems (NASDAQ: ISSX). He has been a Founder, Executive, Angel Investor and Fund Manager throughout his career in the private sector after serving in the United States Army as an Airborne, Air Assault and Ranger.
Started the company 4 years ago by building on his expertise in telephone switching and then moved to VOIP voice over data built on Lenix open source, so Alan brought a basic understanding of the phone business to mobile. He believes that mobile is tied to other things and to cover the landscape of opportunities the company has multi-divisions that started with app development, including focus on important basic applications and then created back-end services, analytics, and categories for specific verticals. This entire infrastructure was built with new knowledge; he believes that Silicon Valley got mobile wrong, they wanted HTML everywhere on the mobile like the web. Phunware built its own infrastructure and created branded mobile experiences. They saw that the mobile device screen was a TV just ready for media and entertainment, then the automobile, technical help, financial services... all the vision of Alan the CEO of the company. The big question has been how do get companies to pay for this delivery of information??
Answer? Buy a company that specializes in creating ad revenue for the new screens, like mobile and portables. This is just what Phunware recently did by acquiring Tapit, since looking for financial support comes from the support and belief of advertisers. When they see Fortune 5,000 companies as potential clients they target one on one, looking for advertisers that want to reach a specific market, the beauty of mobile it is global, an indirect selling of products all over the world. They work both sides of the business, buy side/sell side acting very much like a marriage broker with app and advertisers, if they have good analytics and data it makes both sides of the equation satisfied. They are constantly looking for the right audience/right time/right location. The company manages campaigns, hand holds, provides client self-service and creates all the ads. Alan believes we are in the 2nd inning of the first game. 30% of advertising goes to internet and only 6% for mobile, but if you listen to his enthusiasm and his vision of the future, multi screens-Wearables, in-car entertainment and 400 premium brands and 30-40 thousand developer that all need help you can't help believing in his vision...where to I sign up. The sky is the only limiting factor for the success of this innovative company.
Thanks for reading my blog.... Will I see you reading this on that mobile screen? Let me know.