Ed Zander, chairman and CEO of Motorola, sees connectivity speeds as the key to mobile phones of the future and suspects that for many outside the U.S., a mobile phone may be the first exposure to the Internet. He also let slip some thoughts on the Apple iPhone.

In a story carried by Electronics Supply & Manufacturing, Mr. Zander provided some statistics in his keynote address at the Software 2007 Conference: "Four people are born every second," he pointed out, "and, in the same amount of time, 32 mobile phones are sold. There are now 2.7 billion mobile devices in the market, three times as many as the number of cars or PCs."

As a result, for many people outside the U.S., their first exposure to the Internet will be on a mobile phone. However, for modern cell phones, the infrastructure for high speed data is key. For example, in an Edge network, downloading an MP3 song takes six minutes. On EV-DO, two minutes. However, with WiMax and LTE, the time could be cut to 10 seconds.

"Enterprise mobility is going to be a huge opportunity for companies to be more competitive on a mobile basis," Mr. Zander said and pointed out how Federal Express has used mobile devices to improve efficiency in delivery services.

In a Q&A after the keynote, Mr. Zander was asked how he [Motorola] would deal with the Apple iPhone. "How do they deal with us? That’s the question."

Mr. Zander, in a moment of reconsideration, then said, "Please don’t quote me on that." Eager to shift the discussion to a Motorola product, he described a new Motorola device that he described as a "media monster," capable of 30 frames per second from SD cards preloaded with movies.

Despite quoting impressive specifications, Mr. Zander didn’t have anything to say about design issues..