I do think this is more a strategic pre-cursor and foreshadow to what will be potentially the most significant game changers in 2008 than 2007. To that end, certainly the iPhone demonstrated first hand the importance of user experience and will continue to virally educate the non early adopters through their early adopter friends on all the valuable ways to use the most personal device they carry… certainly iPhone is pushing Blackberry to be more consumer friendly; which I think is a good thing.

Nice set of trends but there is something I think is missing. While Google has certainly stirred things up in a big way I suspect that the “open network” ideas increasingly being espoused by operators is driven by a deeper fear. Many mid to high end mobile terminals are now running some kind of platform software which is attracting development ecosystems, SIP, GPS, IM, email etc are on-board which allows services to be developed that use the mobile networks as simple “plumbing”, the service or application can more easily interract directly with the terminals. The value added of the operators is increasingly being driven towards roaming and transport of data. I question whether video to mobile devices is the fifedom of mobile operators, DVB may turn out to be a better and cheaper option in the future. I suspect that this is really saying that no single network technology or operator can do it all (no matter how badly they may want to!), the real future is about cooperation between technologies, networks and service providers. It’s a network of networks and access mechanisms. I wonder how much progress will be made in 2008 towards these goals.