Posted in On the Horizon on March 17, 2008 |
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Last week, Apple made some significant announcements regarding their iPhone. Almost unbelievable, the iPhone has taken 28% of the U.S. smartphone market in eight months, second only to RIM, who makes Blackberry.
SDK is a software development kit. In this kit, Apple has released the same tools they use to build software. Apple has also released a simulator that will allow developers to test the applications developed for the iPhone.
The success of BlackBerries within the legal community has been validation for mobile computing by lawyers — and that’s just the beginning. It is clear that the iPhone is going to change the way businesses manage mobile applications. I’m sure there will be a competitive response from RIM, and there has been a lot of chatter about Google potentially entering the smartphone market. The innovations are coming to the marketplace rapidly.
It feels like the dawn of a new time. Our guess is that the success or failure of new legal technologies is correlated to how mobile the technology is. Network and server bound models are quickly losing their relevance.
How do you know? Watch the presentation, Apple is not talking about what the future looks like, they are releasing the mobile platform. They have released an SDK for the iPhone. They are releasing the APIs used to build mobile applications. iPhones now work with Exchange — and they will be more secure. Apple has laid out a road map.
Is the day of obsolescence for locally installed software today? No, but reinvesting in the old model seems like investing in a better VHS player. This is not future speak, or predicting what the new big thing is, this is happening now.
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