Renowned venture capitalist Fred Wilson believes that mobile and not the PC-based Internet is where the growth is. This suggestion is also evident on the African continent where applications are developed first for the mobile phone and later for the Web.
Wilson has a successful investment track record. As co-founder of Union Square Ventures, a New York based venture capital firm, he has investments in tech companies such as Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, and Zynga.
Given some his firm’s investment portfolio, he is well positioned to make analysis on tech trends and has a vested interest in ensuring that the tech companies they invest in are on the right path.
As he states in his recent post on his blog “There is a significant shift going on this year, much more significant than we saw last year, from web to mobile. It is most noticeable in games, social networking, music, and news, but it is happening across the board and it presents both great opportunity and great challenges.”
This presents both opportunities and challenges, he says.
Opportunities exist for those companies whose user experience on the mobile Internet is good and better than on the PC-based one. In addition, mobile presents opportunities as it can be carried around allowing for localised services — for discovery and commerce.
The insight he shares is of great value to developers and VCs alike in Africa as most African citizens expoerience the Internet for the first time via a mobile phone. Also given the cost of laptops and PCs, it is best advised that one develops “mobile first” and perhaps later (if necessary) considers developing for the PC-based Internet.
