IDC is predicting slower growth in mobile telephony next year, due a "lack of new catalysts."

No catalysts? Not true broadband, not true multimedia, not true PC functionality? Not music, not games, not TV and radio, all in the phone?

Tough crowd.

Not to keep y'all in suspense, but I disagree.

This is a very Euro-centric prediction. IDC fails to account for the degree to which mobile phones are the PC revolution in much of the world. In China, in India, in all the fastest-growing economies of the world, personal and physical space are at a premium and millions who lack PCs have mobiles.

Next year, at popular prices, those mobiles will move from being 80286 devices, IBM PC XTs say, to being Pentiums with Internet broadband. At popular prices.

Most of next year's capabilities get yawns from Americans. We have TVs and radios and multimedia. But these capabilities are going into millions of hands next year for the very first time.

Growth may well slow in the West. It's hard to make big numbers grow as fast as smaller numbers, and it gets harder as the numbers get bigger. The salesmanship of carriers is still horrible. Prices won't decline because investment bankers will want to be repaid for the Sprint-Nextel merger, and whatever else they have in mind.

But these impediments don't exist in the rest of the world. They don't exist in Africa, or South Asia, or even Latin America. And what those countries are going to see is going to be brand new to them, absolutely brand new.

Once this mobile technology revolution shakes out, the whole world is going to be on the same page, technology-wise. Think about that for a second.

Slowdown? Slowdown hell.