Industry leaders reported on Monday that the next growth phase of the Internet will be driven by wireless services. This was noted by a trend among venture capitalists who helped fund the early boom of the Internet and are ready to invest in the next phase.
John Doerr, one of Silicon Valley"s most renowned venture capitalists and a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, said, "I think the Internet"s largest opportunities are in bringing new services, ones that we barely imagine, to billions of people around the world, wirelessly. We"re probably in the early ... adolescence of this Internet world."
Chief Executives John Chambers of Cisco Systems Inc., Eric Schmidt of Google and Terry Semel of Yahoo Inc. among others have pointed to Wi-Fi and high-speed, or broadband, Internet access as twin engines of growth for their companies and the industry. "There are many ways in which devices are going to be connected," said Bill Joy, former chief scientist and a co-founder of high-end computer maker Sun Microsystems Inc. "The thing we probably have not paid enough attention to is there are going to be many kinds of Webs," he said.
In addition to the familiar World Wide Web, Joy said he envisioned sub-sections of the Internet providing a personal Web, an information Web and an entertainment Web, among others.