At this week’s Web 2.0 Summit in San Fransisco, Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker had a lot to say about the future of mobile computing, most of it strongly positive.


A few points from her presentation:

• Apple makes a great device, which has helped drive explosive growth in mobile computing
• The stock market is a leading indicator of economic recovery
• Mobile computing means carriers face “surging demand but uncertain economics”

Granted, these proclamations are hardly revelatory - in fact, they’re nothing you haven’t heard a few dozen times before. But while it’s hard to know what contribution (if any) yet another restating of such already thoroughly accepted truisms will make to the current level of reverberation going on within the echo chamber of technology and economics analysis, there was (as usual) a great deal of other useful information packed into her presentation.

At first blush, though, a healthy amount of skepticism would seem warranted: Meeker, along with CIBC (and later Merrill Lynch) analyst Harry Blodgett, were among the highest-profile analyst-slash-cheerleaders out there slinging stocks during the dot com bubble of a few years back (unlike Blodgett, Meeker was never personally charged with any wrongdoing, but her employer was party to a $875M multi-firm settlement for conflict of interest violations).

But hey.  Water under the bridge.  There’s a lot of good hard data in the slides, all exceedingly well-presented - and well worth a look.

From an internet video perspective, we’ve had our doubts about the whole mobile computing use case - that is, if the term is defined to include cellular internet access.  For example, we live in a city where one takes  mass transit a lot, and one does notice an increasingly large number of people watching video on mobile devices during their commute.  However, that’s video downloaded at home rather than streamed directly to the device.  Moreover, in addition to wireless data network performance, we feel that other technical issues (such as battery life) and the fundamentally solitary nature of the handheld user experience itself will combine to limit the penetration of mobile video on the handheld device.

While some would point to the 18-25 demographic’s rabid acceptance of mobile devices and mobile internet usage,  I would counter that as these users grow older, enter the work force and start to have home lives,  they will have less opportunity (and desire) to watch video alone on a small handheld device.

We’re bullish on Netbooks.  We’re bullish on Mobil Internet Devices.  We’re bullish on similar devices that haven’t even been invented yet.  It’s these ’slightly-larger-than-a-cellphone’ devices that will drive mobile video usage, and mobile computing.