What does the history of mobile tell us abut the future of cars and VR?

Benedict Evans with another great and razor sharp assessment of how things really got together to form today’s Mobile Internet and Smartphone ecosystem.

I guess this excerpt puts it quite right:

“It’s always fun to laugh at the people who said the future would never happen. But it’s more useful to look at the people who got it almost right, but not quite enough. That’s what happened in mobile. As we look now at new emerging industries, such as VR and AR or autonomous cars, we can see many of the same issues. The big picture 20 years out is actually the easy part, but the details are the difference between Nokia and DoCoMo ruling the world and the world as it actually happened. There’s going to be a bunch of stuff that’ll happen by 2025 that we’d find just as weird.”

 

Source: Mobile, smartphones and hindsight — Benedict Evans