MobileBeat2009 opened impressively with VentureBeat's Matt Marshall moderating a "Fireside Chat" among Vic Gundotra from Google; Michael Abbott, SVP applications and services from Palm; and Dr. Tero Ojanperä, Executive Vice President Services at Nokia. The resulting talk generated some true gems of insight emanated from the discussion, forged from disparate views of how the market is maturing. For Google, for instance, the course is set around the World Wide Web. "We believe the Web has won and that's where we're investing," Gundotra explained. Later, he elaborated by saying "The 'Killer App' on mobile is a wonderful Web browser", but added the condition that it also requires an inexpensive, unlimited data plan.

Palm's Abbott largely agreed with Google. After all, with WebOS as the application platform for its newly launched Pre, the primacy of Web-based applications speak for itself. However the issue of "openness" in support of application developers came up front-and-center as Abbott acknowledged that it had to be "methodical" in terms of rolling out apps. It just released the SDK (software development kit) for the Pre and is exhibiting caution in order to ensure a quality experience for users.

In that respect (addressing the user experience), Nokia's Ojanpera was in agreement. "Open versus closed is not relevant," he said. "It's what is best for the users" that is most important. He added that the OVI Platform "will be open" in a selective sort of way. using exposure of the Map API as an example. He regards OVI as "in the cloud" and notes that, in addition to Maps, APIs for both Location and Music will be opening up and that they already have interesting partners.

Without carriers on the stage, these producers of smartphone application environments charted a worldview where growth is the result of the proliferation of smartphones and low-cost, high-speed data links. Questions from the audience drew attention to the realities of today's mobile economy and ecosystem. One questioner even asserted that there is a slowdown in smartphone sales, but was countered by Gundotra who observed that "Google sees the move to smartphones accelerating (based on unspecified, empirical observations of the mobile activity on Google's various properties).

Nokia, which has global marketshare leadership across all categories of phones, sees a "polarized" market emerging, with high-end phones (in the $700 range but selling for a subsidized $199) co-existing with a broader base of low-end phones whose subsidized price will vary from $0 to $99. The low-end are the prime candidates for services like Nokia's Life Tools which support a range of services for emerging markets.

Yet the conversation kept returning to the viability of Google's vision for a persistent, low-cost data link along with more functions on the browser (including geolocation and application caching in mobile versions of Firefox, Chrome and Opera). The underlying economic model continues to come into question with members of the audience asserting that Google's ultimate aspiration is to by-pass the wireless carriers. To this Gundotra pointed to the search giant's experience in Japan, where carriers KDDI and DoCoMo integrate Gmail into their service offerings under a formal partnership agreement.

Based on this evidence Gundotra noted that "People misunderstand our ambition to cut the carriers out." This was the only line that elicited audible laughter from the audience.