Is the iPhone more important than the PC?
John Doerr is a noted venture capitalist with Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers. He serves on the board of Amazon and Google and half a dozen other private companies. In a spirited conversation at the Web 2.0 Summit about what entrepreneurs in the valley should be doing now (cut your spending and your staff harder than you think you need to and hunker down), he evangelised about ngmoco, a new San Francisco company that has had huge success with games for the iPhone, including Mazefinger and Topple. If you have an iPhone it is certainly worth checking them out.
But he also repeated his claim - made in March at the App store announcement - that the iPhone is more important than the PC. Even with the runaway success of games on Apple's iconic device and thousands of other applications for the iPhone, that is still quite a claim.
It is pretty weird to compare iphone gaming with pc gaming. what was he thinking.
Posted by: iPhone Blog | Nov 6, 2008 6:36:02 AM
He's not comparing PC and iPhone games, he's comparing platforms. Handheld mobile computing and internet is likely to be way more important in society than standard PCs and laptops.
Posted by: clivex | Nov 7, 2008 8:48:29 AM
Well, I'm not surprised. These are the venture capitalists who are trying to 'fund the future' by pumping obscene amounts of money into the iPhone's appeal.
I'd say it's a fairly over-dramaticised statement. Maybe in the future we'll all use smartphones to work round the clock, but for now, when we shut the lid of our laptops, business hours are over, baby.
Posted by: Bob Winter | Nov 7, 2008 9:22:21 AM
John Doerr is right in a sense - the mobile phone is most definitely more important than the PC ever was. They are the true "personal computer" that we were always waiting for. For hundreds of millions of people in the developing world, they are the only "personal computer" they will ever know. For 1st worlders, it will be a little while longer (ironically) but mobile phones will become our only personal computers - as they grow more powerful, they will incorporate PC functionality (and I'm not talking Windows), and the laptop and desktop will become obsolete.
As for the iPhone? It will always remain a rich man's toy for the minority, and aside from a great interface, not a very good one at that.
Posted by: Alex Kerr | Nov 8, 2008 11:38:39 PM