Russell Beattie writes:
Syncing is *THE* most important piece of technology in the future of mobility. Voice is and will be the number one service, but after that it’s syncing.
I don’t care if you *never* use your mobile for internet data, you still want your address book backed up in case you lose your phone, right? That’s syncing. But then it goes from there to any piece of data you store on your phone. You want to not only back it up, but make sure it’s synced with the rest of your digital world. Calendar and PIM information is what Palm does best. Also apps (again Palm does it perfectly), then music files where the iPod shines. And then it goes on to every file you have on your mobile device. You want to make sure it’s the latest version, that if you change that data it’s reflected anywhere else you use that data and finally, that if in case you lose that data, it’s backed up somewhere you can get at it. It’s simple. I don’t care if this all happens over a USB Cable, A Bluetooth Connection or a Cellular Network. It just needs to happen, and seamlessly. If you have to think about syncing, it’s not syncing.
What are the benefits of syncing? Well, we’re seeing it now in the PodCasting meme, aren’t we? The simple act of grabbing the latest audio files and syncing it magically to your music player has created a whole new medium for people to broadcast audio. That’s huge. Right now it’s mostly focused on iPods, but that’s going to quickly change.
By making syncing “just work” Microsoft has enabled their Windows Mobile phones to become a player in this new Podcasting medium. Automagically. And today.
We’re now entering that next phase in the mobile revolution – where data services become a bigger and bigger portion of revenue stream to operators and developers like myself. It’s in this new world where syncing is going to play a huge part.
