Silicon Valley's Golden Triangle: Apple, Google, Palm Mobile Platforms

Close proximity benefits mobile industry

There are a few negatives in the Mobile Golden Triangle, such as lack of public transportation, congestion and the relatively high cost of living. To solve the congestion, the Obama Administration (via stimulus funding) and the State of California (via local-level funding) should consider extending the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) district down the Bayshore Freeway to San Jose, and then do a leg southwest along Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road through Cupertino to Saratoga. This way, the entire Mobile Golden Triangle could benefit from access to BART and from further access to the San Francisco Airport and the City.

While geographic proximity doesn't matter much for individual applications built on these different mobile platforms, I believe that all the major mobile platforms do benefit from the "centers of excellence" that exist around mobile platform development.

Thus, the Mobile Golden Triangle (Apple, Google, Microsoft and Palm), along with Redmond (Microsoft headquarters community), Helsinki (Nokia and Symbian community) and Waterloo (RIM and the Waterloo University community) all benefit from a large community of developers with lots of experience in developing mobile systems.

If you (or your son or daughter) is interested in being a systems developer in mobile, I'd recommend you migrate toward one of the four major geographic communities that are doing the seminal work in mobile development: Mobile Golden Triangle within Silicon Valley, Redmond, Helsinki or Waterloo.

Of course, in this day and age of the virtual office, it may not require you to actually move your family to one of these areas. Instead, it might mean setting up a home office, working for one of the major platform companies remotely, and visiting the company's campus every three to six months to interact with your co-developers.

J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D., is the VP and Chief Analyst with the Frost & Sullivan North American Information & Communication Technologies Practice. As a nationally recognized industry authority, he focuses on monitoring and analyzing emerging trends, technologies and market behavior in the mobile computing and wireless data communications industry in North America. Since joining Frost & Sullivan in 2006, Dr. Purdy has been specializing in mobile and wireless devices, wireless data communications and connection to the infrastructure that powers the data in the wireless handheld. He is author of Inside Mobile & Wireless, which provides industry insights and reaches over 100,000 readers per month.

For more than 16 years, Dr. Purdy has been consulting, speaking, researching, networking, writing and developing state-of-the-art concepts that challenge people's mind-sets, and developing new ways of thinking and forecasting in the mobile computing and wireless data arenas. Often quoted, his ideas and opinions are followed closely by thought leaders in the mobile & wireless industry. He has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University. He can be reached at gerry.purdy@frost.com.

Disclosure Statement: From time to time, I may have a direct or indirect equity position in a company that is mentioned in this column.  If that situation happens, then I'll disclose it at that time. I have an affiliation with IDG Ventures.