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Coming soon: 1,000,000 iphone entrepreneurs

The smart phone as a platform is more important than the PC was as a platform. Why?  Billions vs hundreds of millions. And those billions of smart phones (yes, soon every phone will be a “smart phone”) will be in hands and homes in every country of the world.

Location aware through GPS. Aways connected via low cost data plans. Simple and easy to use.

And smart phones are enabling a new
wave of entrepreneurs. Just think of what Apple has accomplished in the last year. 50,000,000 Iphones and Ipod Touches by now. 50,000 new applications. 1,000,000,000 application downloads.

Multiply this still small Apple smart phone economy by Rim (Blackberry) + Palm (Pre) + Android devices + others with a less-defined strategy (nokia, motorola, samsung, microsoft)  and give them a few years.

Once they get their collective acts together on delivering applications simply and seamlessly to smart phones of all types, we will see a new generation of smart phone entrepreneurs develop to provide the applications for these phones.

Big companies won’t deliver most of these applications. Neither will small companies for the large part. Mostly, it will be individuals. Full time or part time, it doesn’t matter.

Just as eBay created new “careers” and sources of income for millions of users and power sellers, so to will smart phones create a new industry.

My prediction?  In five years over one million people in the USA alone will derive the majority of their income from the sale of smart phone applications.