On a panel about the future of publishing at the Online News Association conference in October 2007, Eric Schwartz of Foneshow made the case for the phone as the platform that mattered next. His arguments were mostly arithmetic: there were more cellphones than toasters on the planet, 2.7 billion mobiles worldwide, and cellphones had outsold iPods in the United States by 20 to 1. News, he said, needs a connected device, and the iPod was not one. Mobile was where the web had been in 1995 — which was the point, because that made it full of potential.
Foneshow’s own attempt at the market was narrowcasting: short audio clips on subjects a subscriber had chosen, delivered to a phone.
The post agreed there was an untapped market and doubted anyone yet knew what worked in it. Would people listen to audio or watch video on a handset? The most valuable addition to the phone so far, on this reading, was wifi, which meant quick free web access and calls over Skype that bypassed the telecoms operator altogether. The question left open was the one that mattered: whether the phone would be used mainly to communicate, to create content, or to consume it.