Victor Keegan's column in today's Guardian made my ears prick up, figuratively speaking, because I was one of those he mentions because I was one of those "young programmers [who] cut their teeth on the easy-to-access coding of the Spectrum and BBC B computers". I made enough money to pay for my driving lessons, but I'm not now, as the article said, "behind Britain's successful computer games companies".

The difference in those days was that the manufacturer, Sinclair or Acorn(?), didn't make money once you'd bought it, whereas the mobile manufactuers and networks look forward to a steady revenue stream. It looks like they are too greedy if they aren't sharing it with the equivalent of those young programmers. On the web you expect your software free, like Flickr, for some functionality. That's partly due to the fact that micropayments are so hard, so you give away your basic service and charge a non-micro payment for a "pro" service. With the mobile platform already good at micropayments I agree with Victor that the mobile industry is missing a trick.