IPUrbia

A recent arstechnica post discusses an ongoing industry collaboration by telco heavy-weights to create a viable mobile search to compete with Google’s free search utilities.

As I noted in my last post, it seems like most of the truly innovative action is going on in the application space. This is not surprising–web applications generally require little capital expenditure and, potentially, high rates of return while physical infrastructure is expensive and has a (relatively) fixed rate of return. Still, innovative applications are only relevant if their producers have access to their market. In some ways, the rules of business have not changed: I’m reminded of the economic fights between farmers and railroads, mills and factories and shipping companies. The successful factories bought up riverboats and ensured their own path to the market; the others, well, you know the story.

Although it is a more complex marketplace today, it is still the same old battle between producers and distribution. Smart companies learn to control distribution, the losers get controlled by distribution. In order for content producers to be viable in ten years, they MUST do more than simply write a few letters every now and then to their local Congressional representative. Google is learning this lesson–they largely provide their own transit and becoming familiar with last mile access. Other content and application providers would be smart to follow suit, either alone or through trade organizations.