移动统治全球的四大拦路虎

    请忘掉台式机。对开发者来说，移动设备才应该是重点。KPCB投资公司（Kleiner Perkins Caufield&Byers）的风险投资家玛丽•米克尔于上周发布了一份互联网发展趋势年度报告，几乎通篇都在表达这个观点。两年前，全球智能手机和平板电脑的出货量就超过了个人电脑。米克尔预测，到明年第二季度，全球平板电脑和智能手机的用户数将全面超过个人电脑用户数。现成的例子是：这个圣诞节孩子们几乎有一半人都想要一台iPad，其中36%的人喜欢iPad mini。

    不过，在移动领域淘金并没人敢打包票一定能成。致富路上会碰上如下四个拦路虎：

    广告。对移动领域的开发者来说最大的挑战是什么？这就是如何为其工作恰当地定价。近期，著名风投机构合广投资（Union Square Venture）的掌门人弗雷德·威尔逊重申他支持含有尊享升级的免费服务。从理论上说，这么做能使应用的潜在曝光量最大化，使得广告可能成为移动应用的一个收入来源。但就算是像Facebook这样免费提供主要应用的大公司，要想在不影响用户体验的前提下在三四英寸的小屏幕上呈现相关广告，也不是一件容易的事情。

    渗透率。尽管从总体上说移动设备会逐步取代台式机，但这一天真正到来还有待时日。全球使用手机的50亿人中，只有10亿人用的是智能手机。其他人用的都是功能更简单的机型。在中国和美国这样的国家，智能手机销售增长率有望每年达到50%的高位，但在许多第三世界国家，由于成本的限制，智能手机不会这么畅销。

    平台分化。对于Facebook或eBay这样的大公司来说，同时对多种移动设备投资在财务上显然问题不大。但众多初创型公司的启动资金往往只有几十万美元——只有极少数能有上百万美元，经济实力很有限。这种情况往往意味着，他们一开始就必须谨慎选择支持哪种平台。不过就算在这些平台上，开发也可能成为问题，尤其是当设备变得越来越多种多样以后。比如一个应用可能在谷歌（Google）的安卓（Android）上运行很流畅，但换个平台却可能完全跑不起来。

    发现应用。苹果iPhone推出初期，成功似乎来得相对容易。花上几周或几个月开发一个有趣或有用的应用让用户“尝鲜”，这个应用就有可能成为下一个“愤怒的小鸟”。但现在，难度就大多了。iOS和安卓平台上的应用均已多达约700,000个（连Windows系统的手机都号称有120,000个应用了）。就算苹果公司和谷歌公司在自己的虚拟商店里尽了最大努力来推广一些应用，我们交流过的一些初创公司的开发者还是表示，现在比以往任何时候都更难引人们的注意。

    译者：清远

    Forget the desktop. If you're a developer, mobile should likely be your focus. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers venture capitalist Mary Meeker all-but-said as much when she presented her annual Internet Trends report last week. Though global smartphone and tablet shipments surpassed PC shipments two years ago, Meeker predicted the tablet and smartphone global user base to pass PCs during the second quarter of next year. Case in point: nearly half of all kids want an iPad this Christmas, with 36% of them preferring an iPad Mini.

    Still, striking it rich on mobile is hardly a sure bet. Here are four stumbling blocks standing in the way:

    Advertising. The biggest challenge for mobile developers? Properly monetizing their work. Union Square Ventures principal Fred Wilson recently reiterated his support for a free tier with a premium upgrade. In theory, doing so maximizes an app's potential exposure. That leaves advertising as one possible revenue stream. But even companies like Facebook (FB), which offers main app for free, have publicly grappled with how to present relevant ads on screens as small as three or four inches without taking away with the user experience.

    Penetration. Although overall mobile will eclipse the desktop, there's still a long way to go. Of the 5 billion mobile users around the world, just 1 billion of them are using smartphones. The rest are using simpler feature phones. In countries like China and the U.S., smartphone growth is expected to grow rapidly 50% year-over-year, but smartphones remain a tougher sell in many third-world countries where the cost can be prohibitive.

    Fragmentation. For larger companies like Facebook or eBay (EBAY), investing in mobile across myriad devices is obviously less of an issue financially, but for many startups, which often debut with hundreds of thousands -- and in rarer cases, millions -- of dollars in initial funding, resources remain limited. This often means being selective about which platforms to support initially. But within those platforms, development can be a problem, particularly as devices become even more diverse. An app may run smoothly on one Google (GOOG) Android device for example, but not work at all on another.

    App discovery. In the early days of Apple's (AAPL) iPhone, success seemed relatively easy. Spend a few weeks or months coding a fun or useful app for users to "snack" on, and that app could be the next "Angry Birds." Now, it's harder. Much harder. Both iOS and Android apps number around 700,000 each. (Heck, even Windows Phone claims 120,000.) Even with Apple and Google's best efforts to highlight apps in their virtual storefronts, some start-up developers we've spoken to admit it's more challenging than ever to get noticed.