me thinky you wrongy.

http://www.kelseygroup.com/research/mobile-mark…

I just don't see search engines and the current big American internet companies growing much as a result. SMS payments won't need a Google Checkout or PayPal type product as an intermediary.

True, the 3rd world is not going to contribute a huge amount to the capital growth of large companies but there are some very innovative experiments going on in integrating mobile technologies into the fabric of society such as SMS money transfers (I give a money lender in Kuala Lumpur 50 ringgit, he sends a SMS to a money lender in Laos and my family gets the equivalent minus a commission).

Where the real mobile growth is going to take off is in second world countries, especially in South East Asia. You're skeptical that China could amount to much but I'm willing to wager the average Shanghainese has a more advanced cell phone than the average Chicagoan and they use it in more sophisticated ways too.

Experiments with integrating electronic money into cell phones in Japan and Hong Kong also prove that a credit card is not needed to perform mobile commerce. If you're already swiping your cell phone to buy milk and eggs at the supermarket, it's a very short leap to convince you to buy movie tickets or sports scores online from the same account.

I'm not saying the mobile market is the way to salvation but it's impossible to provide an insightful analysis when you look at the space purely from a US perspective.

Google's strategy has always evolved around creating markets rather than dominating them, though, so while the current mobile market can't support something like Google, I think they're betting that they can create a new market in which they'll be the leader for a long time.

And if they grow as wealthy as we are (which is possible, but not in 5 years) they'll either have laptops, or they'll use mobile devices the way they would use laptops, which is more of a shift than actual growth.