IMHO at this stage mobile is a style in search of a substance. I don't know of one thing you can do on an iPad you can' t do on a laptop ( talking "productivity" ) except delude yourself you're impressing the guy in the seat next to you. I don't want to watch football on my phone. I have been shown hundreds of iPhone apps that have only proved to me that the same public that bought mood rings and pet rocks and Scientology has found something beside lottery tickets to soak up their excess income.

I don't want to work on a screen without a keyboard. I read books on my Kindle and love it. If I had an iPad I'd love that. I just don't see any connection with productivity.

I have no idea of whatever facts generate the contention "corporates already are folding because mobile devices make people more productive."

Macs revolutionized desktop publishing. They didn't do a damn thing for accounting. (but Visicalc did) Mobile devices have a great future, but outside of specialized markets, not for productivity (except for those who produce, market and develop for mobile devices.) They will be televisions, communicators, interfaces to the world. That's wonderful and I love it, it just isn't the same thing as productivity (it could even be argued it is the enemy of same <bg> )

The ubiquity of Twitter is a pretty good example that while for a few people a technology may indeed be an epic step forward in productivity - or at least interconnectedness and communication - it succeeds financially to whatever degree it can be fadishly adopted for trivial purposes.

Mobile's big, and it's going to get bigger. But, as Kevin says, its a new market, a new opportunity and does not displace an existing paradigm that is maturing on its own path. I don' t think the lesson of 1920 was "we've got airplanes now - the car thing is over"

>>>I don't doubt the huge future of "mobile" but I also don't doubt that millions of businesses with computer on desks are going to continue to use computers on desk or laptop equivalents for a lot of business purposes.
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>Already happening- corporate IT depts across the US are exasperated at having to support senior execs' own mobile devices rather than an approved issued device. As smart phones sweep across the mobile arena, it'll happen more and more and corporates already are folding because mobile devices make people more productive.
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>>> I'm not sure there is going to be a huge rush to have the accounting department doing their work on iPhones <g>
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>What about iPads, or the next generation hige-res Android devices? If it's not already out, the next published round of data shows those devices taking a dent out of PC sales.
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>>>But I'm not that panicky about developing WPF apps for Windows 7 and Sql Server and feeling that by doing so and not jumping on Android I'm the same as a Foxpro developer in 2005.
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>If you're doing frontends, IMHO you *need* it to work on mobile as well as workstation- unless there are specialized security reasons not to. Since mobile access is far from perfect, ideally your apps will have a local cache that works on multiple OS and some mechanism to synchronize. If it's a browser app, you still want it working on multiple devices. IMHO this is a recipe for sqlite and Javascript. I#m happy to leave it there and revisit in a year if you like.
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>>>Not sure what the installed base of Windows OS boxes out there is, but I have a pretty good idea convincing businesses to dump them all for iOS, Android or something else is going to take a sales job even more intense than Steve Jobs on the Sea Org <bg>
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>LOL. But that's not what happens: people start using their mobile devices and complaining if it doesn't work. More people get devices. It snowballs.
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>>>In the meantime, of course, I will live by the Golden Rule - client's gold, client's rules <g> )
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>I'm sure we all agree about that. ;-) But here's another prediction: a new Fox Software equivalent will burst on the scene with a local database app that works on any device, synchronizes data automatically and works for the devices that matter. Until then, Javascript and sqlite are the frontrunners IMHO.