The CTIA Wireless (News - Alert)2010 event in Las Vegas this week marks the 25th year of CTIA hosting what it claims is now “one of the largest technology events in the world.” Certainly this year’s program and exhibitor participants, ranging from smart energy, wireless health, transportation, entertainment, retail and cloud computing, encompass much more than the core telecom and wireless network exhibits that were the original focus of CTIA members. In fact the roster of presentations reflects the central role of wireless connectivity for smart products and services across multiple industry sectors and ecosystems.

To get a long-term perspective on how much CTIA and the wireless industry have changed in the past decade, I spoke to Jeff Ross about the wireless trends he is following at CTIA 2010, and the key differences he has seen in this industry event since the 1990s. Ross is Managing Director of Net Net Group, LLC, a wireless consulting practice which provides Business Development, Marketing, and Product Management services for companies developing and deploying mobile products. He has more than 15 years of experience in the wireless industry and has led the deployment of a number of highly successful enterprise and consumer-based mobile applications and services—and has been an active CTIA participant since 1997.

Mary Cronin (News - Alert) (News - Alert): How does this year’s CTIA program compare to the first one you attended?

Jeff Ross (pictured left): It doesn't seem like that long ago, but the changes have been enormous, especially in the past few years. Back in the 1990s, we didn't commonly use terms like 3G, App Store, Ringtone, Smartphone, Social Networking, or Mobile Marketing. Now these are part of the language—not just for the industry insiders, but as terms that most consumers know and understand today. The wireless subscribers in the US today, especially those who own smartphones see their phones as computing devices and feel that mobile data and apps are of equal or even more importance than voice calling. There are parallel changes in the themes of the speakers and the exhibitors at CTIA expanding the mobile ecosystem far beyond the traditional telecommunications and hardware providers. Now we expect to see applications and devices and software companies from a lot of different industry sectors like health and energy and entertainment side by side with the wireless carriers and telecom equipment vendors.

MC: Whether or not they are highly visible at CTIA, Apple (News - Alert), Google and other companies that were not until recently wireless players have a big role in the smart phone and mobile device space. What impact is this having on the wireless ecosystem?

JR: I think that Apple has changed the wireless industry –which is interesting given that Apple doesn’t actually attend CTIA. A few years ago, Apple wasn’t an ecosystem player, but because of the success of the iPhone (News - Alert) and the App Store at this point everyone is talking about them and in many ways the industry is reacting to Apple’s latest announcements even though they are not here. I think one major reason is that Apple demonstrated the advantage of owning the entire mobile experience from the device and OS platform to the applications and distribution.

Google (News - Alert)is taking a very different approach emphasizing open source and OS licensing. That is having an even bigger impact on the handset manufacturers. So even though it has taken Google and Android (News - Alert) longer to get adoption and market share, they are growing fast now and making their presence felt in many ways at CTIA through adopters and industry sector partners.

MC: What future trends do you see coming to the fore at CTIA this year?

JR: I am a really big fan of connected consumer electronics in the M2M space. We are seeing Kindles and many other e-readers, wireless TV and streaming of wireless to the automobile and to medical devices as part of the growth potential for wireless. As more and more wireless modules are built into all sorts of consumer devices, the complexity of the connections will be completely hidden and there will be more focus on how to create a unique user experience with a connected, always-on device. There will be strong ROI for the companies to have that connectivity with their customers as well as with machines for remote monitoring.

One “future” trend that I have seen evolving for over a decade is the importance of mobile applications. It’s interesting how much credit Apple is getting for its business model with the App Store, as if they created this idea. I like to remind people that a lot of companies were making money on mobile apps long before Apple even entered the wireless sphere. BREW was an early and very successful model for mobile app distribution and it enabled many successful new businesses. In fact, BREW is still a viable applications channel with many carriers (recently AT&T (News - Alert)) adopting it for the feature phone market –this market will be a big factor for years to come.

Dr. Cronin is a Professor of Management in the Information Systems Department at Boston College. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Michael Dinan