VCs + Crystal Balls = Mobile Boom?

This is a little delayed, as I wasn't at the event. But here's a video Eric Savitz and I did for Tech Ticker on the Churchill Club's Top 10 Tech Trends event, held last week. Interestingly, almost half of the trends were about mobile. I've also reported on Tech Ticker that some Web entrepreneurs like Kevin Rose also thing real mobile innovation is about to happen. Here's Eric's report:

It's hard to know. Anyone who has been around the Valley has heard the mobile hype before and we have little in the name of real innovation or huge public companies to show for it. Two good things could come out of the current mobile excitement. (It's not quite hype yet.)

One: We will finally see some true innovation in mobile apps. Handsets are great and all, but software is where the magic happens. A bad UI can make the sexiest phone abominable to use. Thanks to the iPhone real software and real apps are possible for the first time on phones. Who isn't excited about that? Even I am and my fingers are too cloddy to work a touch screen keyboard!

Or, two: Companies aiming for the mobile market will get bogged down in regulation and fragmented markets, die a slow death after raising too much money, and we won't have to hear about MOBILE! for another few years.

Let's suspend reporter cynicism and hope it's different this time, that younger people and products like the iPhone will actually make us as mobile-centric as Asian markets-- hell, even European markets. I'd love to have a phone that didn't anger me at some point in the day for one reason or another.