"Persistence" - you know, while I find the other comments here pretty funny (ley lines, haha!), I sat up and said "yeah" when I got to persistence. That's a good insight - right now, our lives and data are all balkanized between devices, between services, and so forth. Something to tie things together is an obvious next step.
I've re-read my article several times now, because your comment (particularly its score) has made it clear that I must improve. For that, though, I need more feedback. Do you mean that the logic isn't good, that the language isn't good, or both?
The heart of the article is the expectation that whoever can bring a complete, seamless experience to the mobile platform will be the big winner through the next few years, and that they will probably be a large incumbent.
All the rest is meant to be framing for the conversation. Not tools for prediction, but for explanation.
Please, if you can express what I need to fix to make this article better than "gibberish" or "unintelligible", let me know, because I want to be capable of expressing my thoughts. I want to improve.
It reminds me of that "news consumption over time" strata chart that made the rounds last year, whose data source was its author's own perception of history.
If I'm reading this correctly, the implication is that social and mobile applications have been (or will soon be) exhausted. I disagree, I think there's a lot of space left for innovation, though it will be hard to displace entrenched companies at this point.
As far as the 'next big thing' goes, do you think that there is any space for a small hardware company anymore? You suggest that the next trend is new form-factors/hardware, and at this point, the companies that would do well at that are those with deep pockets for R&D.
Definitely agree about the fact that seamless integration between devices/having a centralized global profile will be the next big thing. It's something that can increase the usefulness of other products and that if well executed have a huge market imo.
Every time i think about this i always remember this old Intel video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrzeiUvDZog
