Tech and media groups draw battle lines for mobile superiority

[Commentary] Media companies seem to have decided they have little choice but to follow their audience, which is spending more time on social networks, particularly on mobile devices: “It’s important to have a presence or you become irrelevant,” says Declan Moore, chief media officer at National Geographic. What has yet to play out, though, is the realignment among the businesses that ride on top of the mobile platform. How smartphone technology will evolve, and which new business ecosystems will develop on mobile, are still unclear, according to Benedict Evans, an analyst at Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm. “On one level, Apple and Google have won the smartphone wars and they’re now taking laps of honour,” he said. “At the same time, what you’re going to do on these devices -- and who’s going to control them and how they’re going to work and what the acquisition channels and the interaction models look like -- are still completely unsettled.” Central to this is the battle to attract and direct the attention of mobile internet users. For the winners, success will bring valuable data about this new audience, which in turn is likely to support new advertising empires or fuel mobile commerce.