AT&T: 56.8% of its 69.3 million postpaid subscribers have smartphones, up from 42.7% a year earlier and 32.8% two years ago. [source]

Verizon: 44.5% of its postpaid customers have smartphones. That’s up from 39% in the third quarter of 2011. [source]

This entire article ignores the many ways to monetize mobile over the next ten years. What would you rather have?

• Sell 200M devices/yr earning profits of $150 per device.*
• Power 2 billion devices earning $60/device/year.

Apple is optimizing for the former scenario and Google for the later.  For Google’s strategy to work they need market share (eye balls) which can translate into plenty of profits.

When you start looking at a problem, it seems really simple—because you don’t understand its complexity. And your solutions are way too oversimplified, and they don’t work. Then you get into the problem and you see it’s really complicated. And you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That’s where most people stop, and the solutions tend to work for a while. But the really great person will keep going and find the key underlying principle of the problem and sort of come full circle with a beautiful, elegant solution that works. - Steve Jobs

With so many distribution platforms content becomes king - again.  

Exclusive content is what makes HBO worthwhile, and Netflix is smart to follow.  How long until Apple and Amazon follow. - Daring Fireball

It’s not easy, of course. People forget that the Apple Store encountered some bumps along the way. No one came to the Genius Bar during the first years. We even had Evian water in refrigerators for customers to try to get them to sit down and spend time at the bar. But we stuck with it because we knew that face-to-face support was the very best way to help customers. Three years after the Genius Bar launched, it was so popular we had to set up a reservation system.

Ron Johnson on Building the Apple Store

Facebook made some pretty bold moves this week with the launch of the Open Graph.  It does away with the “Share” button and rather hooks actions like the simple act of hitting a Play Music button in a music service into a social status update.  As different industries take advantage of the Open Graph it will be the realization of an incredible sensor network.   This is new and different.  Facebook deserves kudos for pushing the boundaries of what it means to share.  

The problem is that most of the launch partners were showcasing trivial scenarios. Open Graph will get far more interesting when its hooked up to parts of your life that impact you financially and do so consistently.

• Car Insurance: Imagine an FB app hooked up to your car’s gas pedal.  Each time you accelerated (too quickly) a status would be generated and your insurance premiums would be re-calculated.  
• Health coverage:  Imagine an FB app that is hooked up to Nike+ so your insurance premiums go down as you run/walk more.
• Loans:  Imagine an FB app that is hooked up to a loan — where everybody in their social network will automatically see whether the payments are made in full and on-time.  

In my case, the companies that I started, I wanted to have a significant effect on the future of the world, or try to, at least. And so it wasn’t really from the perspective of figuring out what’s the easiest way of making money. Because that would have certainly ruled out rockets and electric cars.

Elon Musk