P2P is Back – On Mobile Devices

September 30, 2005 in mobile, p2p, wireless

For the most part P2P hasn’t really taken off the way the industry expected. If you flash back to 2001 when P2P was all the rage you’d think it was the next technology revolution and we’d all be running on a P2P kernel.

Bittorrent is big of. Bittorrent is huge! Certainly this is one exception but only in the bandwidth area. We don’t really see too much distributed P2P compute networks taking over and entering into the consumer space.

I should not that by successful I mean being used by hundreds of millions of people Most P2P apps just don’t fall into that market.

Things will change though due to mobile devices. The next generation of mobile hardware will change the way we look at computing. The Treo opened my eyes about how much a simple device can change your life.

The laptop space will also change. No longer will laptops be idle devices once the lid is closed. Expect the next generation of mobile devices to have a new mode of operation where they go passive and still remain on the network. EVDO and WiMAX will enable laptops to perform other compute tasks while you’re not using them including downloading your podcasts, fetching your mail, fetching your TV shows via Bittorrent. etc.

This will of course burn your battery if you’re not careful. I think we’re going to need hardware to support this new passive wireless mode. This would include temp storage in the form of compact flash to avoid spinning up your hard drive. We’re also going to need wireless devices which are smart enough to not waste power. I think it’s reasonable to expect a slight power drain of about 10% per house when in this mode but I might be wrong.

Since all these new mobile devices will yield a massive amount of underutilized compute time I think we could expect a next generation of startups blooming to take advantage of this situation.

The first vendor to pick an open platform and push it hard will be the leader. The Palm OS is dead. It’s just horrible. Linux seems to be the obvious choice (even Russell seems to agree now). Windows Mobile will still be a player simply because Microsoft is willing to waste billions to remain a player in the market.