David Pogue discusses the potential of mobile devices

In America there are 3 or 4 really influential tech journalists whose opinions really matter in mainstream newspapers. People like Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher of The Wall Street Journal, Ed Baig of USA Today, and my personal favorite David Pogue of The New York Times. Pogue’s short videos which air on CNBC are also available as a podcast and are something I look forward to every week. Pogue gave a speech recently where he discusses the mobile trends he expects to see develop in 2009. It is a really entertaining and informative discussion (including a couple of funny songs). The main thrust of his talk centers on how mobile services will become more and more important in the coming year. More after the break, including the video.

I couldn’t agree with Mr. Pogue more on this issue. Everybody loves hardware, and I am no exception, with CES and MacWorld happening next week, and Mobile World Congress following a couple of weeks after, there will surely be some exciting news on the hardware front coming soon, but this year mobile services will become the driving force innovating the way we use our phones, rather than hardware.

The new wave of app stores for iPhone, Android and others will probably still capture our imagination for some time to come, however these apps will really just be a stepping stone to integrating location based and internet connected services into our mobile experience. Apps like Urban Spoon on the iPhone, or any of the myriad of Twitter clients available for your favorite mobile platform (I like Twim on S60) are already changing the mobile landscape. We are only beginning to see the potential for these types of services, and the coming year will show us how much more utility is available when these mobile services become less dependent on what OS we are using.