A Whole New World Of Mobile Markets: Cars, Photos, TVs, Wallets And More

Editor’s note: Doug Renert is?a co-founding partner of?Tandem Capital, Silicon Valley’s first and largest mobile accelerator fund. Follow him on Twitter @dougrenert. Mary Meeker explains in her oft-cited?report?that the world?s 1.1 billion smartphone users still comprise only 17 percent of mobile subscribers. Yet, these users have tripled mobile Internet access over the last two years. This points to enormous continued growth in the mobile space over the coming years, and countless droves of mobile-focused startups are emerging to reap the rewards. But not all mobile startup opportunities are created equal.?Entrepreneurs should consider the odds of disrupting a given market before they spend their time chasing just any opportunity. Some markets are overly saturated with powerful incumbents. Others are simply too nascent to yield significant results. While reviewing hundreds of startup applicants to our mobile accelerator fund over the last quarter, I noticed patterns begin to emerge in the businesses they were pursuing and dropped them into a few mental ?buckets.? Innovative entrepreneurs will create exceptions within each of these buckets, but I still wanted to offer my thoughts as we enter 2013 looking to find the next big thing in mobile. Too Crowded Location-based social networking. The idea of finding your friends anytime, anywhere through a single app has been exhausted by independent platforms like?Foursquare and integrated into existing social media platforms like?Facebook. Even apps like?Twist made an attempt by providing friends your ETA via email, but it has yet to find success. In the end, there?s still no better mobile meet-up tool than a text message. Additionally, even if a new service can build an audience, it?s unclear if revenues will follow. Just ask Foursquare. Photo-sharing. The clear winner when it comes to photo-sharing is Instagram (and by default Facebook), and more recently?Snapchat has exploded. But in this space, there are hundreds of apps for every single one that ?makes it.? In addition, monetization remains elusive in this category, giving newbies next to no chance of survival other than an acquihire. Workplace collaboration.?It?s a challenge to attribute any kind of value to a service that requires multiple people, using it at the same time, for growth?? just ask Huddle or?Double Dutch. With players such as Google and Dropbox (and now?Dropbox Mobile) well entrenched in our work lives, that challenge has become even greater. Even though most of the existing services have glaring weaknesses, this mobile niche is an incredibly

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