The reality is always more complex than “The year of….” can ever capture.

I sold and marketed my first digital camera in 1985 or so…and for me every year there after was the year of the digital camera as my sales increased several hundred % every year…it just wasn’t noticeable even as blip in the camera world until much, much later…15 or so years for digital cameras to be a substantial market and 20 before the film industry totally collapsed.

Every market is a compilation of niches. If a technology makes sense it will conquer them one niche at a time as they each collectively realize and understand the benefit. That is a slow and laborious process. In the case of cell phones it’s hardware, it’s software, it’s bandwidth, ingrained behaviors and a bunch of other issues…

Greg’s model predicts a timeframe (5-7 years) when mobile search (not necessarily mobile marketing or advertising) will surpass desktop search. That is certainly one benchmark that will clearly indicate “The Year of Mobile” probably occurred a few years earlier.

For Local Search, I see the Apple iPhone 3rd party software created with their SDK as a seminal event that will lead to much broader local search adoption. Whether that leads to an attendant increase in mobile marketing, one can only guess…my guess is that it will… But the software dev will contribute definitely contribute.

In February 2007, I predicted that success in mobile advertising would occur after 50% of the US population had iphone/android like capabilities and I (who doesn’t normally engage in future stuff) modeled that to be 4-5 years…ie 2011-2012.

I know that it takes a long time, I know that it happens in fits and starts, niche by niche, I know that profit can be made along the way and services provided.

Does anybody know when the “Year of Mobile Advertising” is? No, not until it has passed but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep our eyes open along the way. And hey it makes for good blog posts.

Mike