In his keynote at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Google CEO Eric Schmidt called attention to the growing importance of mobile devices. He encouraged application developers–both inside and outside of Google–to “work on mobile first,” before they create desktop apps.
In addition, he pointed out that mobile Web adoption is growing eight times faster than desktop Web adoption did. And with smartphone sales growing 30 percent per year, their sales will soon outstrip PC sales.
“The basic message here, is that there’s a confluence of three factors — computing, connectivity and cloud,” Schmidt said. “The phone is no longer the phone, it’s your alter ego. It’s the extension of everything we are. It doesn’t think as well as we do, but it has a better memory.”