Steven Jobs
Cofounder and CEO, Apple
Age: 53
Location: Palo Alto, Calif.

Sean Maloney
Executive VP and Chief Sales Officer, Intel
Age: 51
Location: Palo Alto, Calif.

Although Martin has been gored by critics for his efforts to relax media consolidation regulations, his (perhaps reluctant) support for the Google-driven “open access” requirements in this year’s massive spectrum auction is definitely a good thing. Given that carriers can cozy up to the FCC more effectively than the average consumer, it was a relief when Martin agreed to require the winner of the coveted 700-MHz spectrum block to allow access to any compatible device and application a user may wish to connect to the network. Despite some initial wailing and teeth-gnashing by carriers, the wireless providers acquiesced to the consumer-friendly requirements.

But Martin's job is not easy. In about 120 countries of UN members, only less than 10 countries still lock the users' mobile phones. US is one of these few left-behind countries, and most of others are in Africa!

Kevin Martin
Chairman, FCC
Age: 41
Location: Washington, D.C.

Balsillie pushed RIM to better-than-expected subscription numbers earlier this year. The BlackBerry, which began as a badge of importance in Washington, D.C., and on Wall Street, then spread through boardrooms and down to the rank-and-file, is now finding space in consumer pockets and expanding the horizons for the wider penetration of smart phones in general.

“They’ve done an excellent job of very quickly going into the consumer market, not only with plans, but with device,” said analyst Barry Gilbert of Strategic Analytics, who cited the BlackBerry Pearl and Curve as handsets that are helping RIM gain traction outside the enterprise. A ChangeWave survey in January showed that among consumers thinking about buying a phone within six months, RIM handsets barely lagged behind the iPhone as objects of future affection.
 
When racing between iPhone and Blackberry started last year, one 3rd company is giggling behind the scene. What's this guy? You will see soon.

Jim Balsillie
CEO, Research In Motion
Ages: 47 and 47
Location: Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Andy Rubin
Director of mobile platforms, Google
Age: 45
Location: Los Altos Hills, Calif.

Handset makers are slapping GPS onto phones left and right, but Garmin’s upcoming nüvifone starts with the company’s tried-and-true navigation knowledge and folds a quad-band, 3G, GSM phone into the mix. This daring move, in which Pemble is instrumental, should bring a new level of navigational polish to the cell phone.

But Pemble isn’t putting all of his eggs in that one basket. The company recently launched an upgrade to Garmin Mobile, which brings a new interface and Google Local search to BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. And Garmin’s standalone GPS devices will be getting smarter with an upcoming feature that will allow consumers to send trip-planning results from Mapquest.com to their navigator. In the near future, Garmin may become a solid brand in location and mobile convergence of the future mobile device.

Cliff Pemble
President and COO, Garmin
Age: 42
Location: Kansas City, Mo.

When Peter Chou jumped ship from Digital Equipment Corporation to cofound High-Tech Computer Corporation in 1997, he was making a bet that the PC would eventually take a back seat to PDAs and mobile phones. “I thought that small handheld devices would play an integral role and was very fascinated with this idea,” Chou said when asked about HTC’s early days. “If we could integrate with people’s information—anywhere, anytime—there would be a strong market for that kind of device.”

Turns out Chou was right, but for a long time HTC was known only as a behind-the-scenes player that made handhelds for other companies such as Compaq, Palm, and T-Mobile.
Under Peter Chou’s leadership as CEO during the past four years, HTC has stepped out of the shadow of other tech giants to become one of the preeminent smart phone brands. The HTC Touch, for example, has sold more than 2 million units since its launch last year.
 

Peter Chou
Cofounder and CEO, HTC
Age: 51
Location: Taipei, Taiwan

Willie Lu
Founder and Chairman, USCWC
Age: 41
Location: Cupertino, Calif.

Over the past four years, Vanjoki oversaw Nokia’s N series line, which has been on the leading edge of mobile multimedia devices. Last year’s high-end N series handsets and Internet Tablets were category-defining products, and under Vanjoki, Nokia expanded the definition of a handset company with its forays into multimedia services through its Ovi content portal. Vanjoki’s mandate expanded to cover all Nokia products, thanks to a management restructuring this year, so he’s now less focused on multimedia—though this also reflects the fact that the distinction between phones and computers is fading, a transformation in which he has played an important role.

Anssi Vanjoki
Executive VP of new markets and general manager of multimedia, Nokia
Age: 52
Location: Helsinki, Finland

Dan Hesse took the reins of a beleaguered Sprint at the end of last year. In the wake of what is widely considered a botched merger with Nextel overseen by his predecessor, Hesse was charged with stanching Sprint’s customer bleed. His plans to restore the carrier’s luster may well have repercussions across the whole of the mobile industry.

Sprint is the only American carrier with a substantial investment in Mobile WiMAX, a service it dubbed Xohm (pronounced “zome”). “What Xohm will do is give us a two-year-plus head start on fourth generation [wireless],” Hesse said. The company recently agreed to combine its WiMAX wireless broadband business with Clearwire, targeting a network deployment that will cover between 120 million and 140 million people in the U.S. by the end of 2010. Intel, along with Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks, have invested a combined $3.2 billion into the new company. Sprint will have a 51 percent stake in the joint venture.

While two Berkeley and Stanford professors pointed out that no single wireless standard can do both broadband and seamless mobility, Sprint wants to challenge this communication theory and rewrite the text book in the mobile WiMax movement.

Dan Hesse
CEO, Sprint Nextel
Age: 55
Location: Overland Park, Kans.

If there is one person that can reverse Palm’s fortunes and put it back on top of the smart phone world, it’s Jon Rubinstein, whose name may ring a bell for Apple fans: He was on the engineering team that conceived the iPod and later stood as head of the entire iPod division. He also led the group of Apple engineers that developed the first colorful iMac.

Today, Rubinstein puts the same leadership and creativity into the mobile handset business at Palm, where he heads up the company’s product development efforts. Rubinstein came on board just as Palm was putting the finishing touches on the Centro, and it’s no coincidence that CEO Ed Colligan has said that this device has a higher sell-through rate than any other smart phone to leave Palm’s doors. It blew past the one-million mark in March. There’s no doubt that success runs through Rubinstein’s veins, and the fate of Palm depends on it through the company’s complete overhaul of the Treo, which will debut next year.

Jon Rubinstein
Executive Chairman, Palm
Age: 51
Location: Sunnyvale, Calif.

Wang, a native of Hanghzou well-known for Westlake and the base of China mobile communication industries (most CEOs in China wireless sectors came from Hangzhou), was CEO of China Telecom. He switched with his Hangzhou colleague Xiaochu Wang and managed China Mobile in 2004. Until his scheduled retirement this year, he has spent most time in promoting China Mobile to go international and go open wireless architecture both in service, system and business model. Wang pushed the company to support multiple standards' convergence with GSM, CDMA, WiFi and possible WiMax in one company offering and let the mobile user to utmost benefit the services without caring too much on access technologies. Wang headed the campaign in cutting the roaming fee, removing incoming charges and eventually making the mobile service free. He is smart enough as China Mobile made huge revenues from TV SMS models, not directly from mobile callings.

Before 1996, China Mobile already unlocked all mobile phones, and left the cellular network open for any mobile devices which Verizon and AT&T will be going to do so in the next decade !

Jianzhou Wang
CEO, China Mobile
Age: 59
Location: Hangzhou, China

In the three years since Mark Hurd took the reins as HP’s CEO, after the dismissal of his predecessor Carleton S. Fiorina, the notebook giant has become one of the top-ranking and top money-making technology companies in the world: HP’s revenues totaled over $107 billion in the last four fiscal quarters. HP's next business focus: mobile computerized phone.

Under Hurd, HP changed the game as the company became one of the first PC manufacturers to push stylish, eye-catching devices with its slick Imprint design—and the competition quickly followed suit, much to the delight of consumers worldwide. Hurd has also pushed HP to be the first name-brand PC maker to enter the surging low-cost mini-notebook market with its new Mini-Note (see full review on p. 80). And while it’s pricier than the competition, it’s slicker design, full-size keyboard, and configurability options redefine the fledgling category.

Mark Hurd
President, chairman and CEO, HP
Age: 52
Location: Palo Alto, Calif.

McAdam has put Verizon Wireless on a course to support non-Verizon devices and applications, a major departure for the historically closed carrier. “If we move out five or ten years, we should be able to take our phone and change from carrier to carrier,” said independent analyst Jeff Kagan. “Verizon started that ball rolling. As soon as they said it, all the carriers jumped in and said they were doing the same thing.”

McAdam also led Verizon Wireless to be the first national carrier with an “unlimited” plan, with AT&T and T-Mobile announcing similar plans on the same day and Sprint’s version following a week later. “Sprint offers a more comprehensive plan than Verizon, but the fact that [Verizon] came out ahead of time spoiled the party for Sprint a little,” Gartner analyst Tole Heart suggested.

McAdam will be leveraging Verizon Wireless’ recent $9.36 billion 700-MHz auction bounty to roll out the network beginning in 2010, which the company has said will bring “a tidal wave of innovation” to the wireless space, focusing on open wireless architecture and service architecture.

Lowell McAdam
President and CEO, Verizon Wireless
Age: 53
Location: Basking Ridge, N.J.

Aircell recruited Cruz, one of the founders of Airfone, to jumpstart its in-flight broadband business. Five years later, the company is rolling out service through American Airlines and Virgin America. Where other companies have failed, Aircell might succeed: It’s the first service to win support from a domestic carrier, and because it uses cellular—not satellite—technology, users pay just $12.95 to surf the Web on a transcontinental flight, compared with as much as $30 for the discontinued Boeing Connexion service.

Over the next year, Cruz wants to see more airlines adopt the technology and offer it on more flights. More important, he expects in-flight broadband to change the way we work—and the way we play. “You’re on your way to Disney World and you want to start booking reservations to restaurants,” Cruz said. “I can’t think of anyone that doesn’t have a need.”

Cruz's vision is more beyond the web access. He is working to enable the same mobile phone device to work both on earth and in the sky, and become truly personal communications device.

Joe Cruz
Senior vice president and CTO, Aircell
Age: Declined to say
Location: Itasca, Ill

Jeff Omelchuck has a good relationship with nature. “I grew up in Montana enjoying outdoor activities like backpacking, skiing, and mountaineering with an ethic of ‘leave no trace,’” he shared. His environmental interests continually crossed paths with his engineering studies, and in 2005 he founded the Green Electronics Council, which went on to facilitate the launch of EPEAT, a system developed by a team of stakeholders (among them, manufacturers, researchers, and the EPA) that would finally make sense of and standardize the environmental criteria for producing and handling electronics towards Clean ICT.

As executive director, Omelchuck oversaw last year’s implementation of the system, which has since drawn the attention of virtually every major notebook maker, including Apple, Dell, HP, Sony, and Toshiba. Omelchuck asserts EPEAT has been “stunningly successful,” and plans are under way for international expansion, possible partnerships, and developing criteria for other electronics, including mobile handheld devices.

Jeff Omelchuck
Founder and director, Green Electronics Council
Age: 49
Location: Portland, Ore.

“People ask us all the time what Mozilla’s going to do about the mobile Web, and I’m very excited to announce that we plan to rock it.” So said Schroepfer on his blog last October, and he’s overseeing the development of the Mozilla browser (which underlies Firefox) to make it true. He has made mobile development a priority and supervised the addition of mobile browser experts to the Mozilla team.

Mozilla-based mobile browsers are already available on Nokia’s Internet Tablet products, and Schroepfer plans to bridge the gap between the mobile and desktop browsing experiences: Eventually the same Mozilla code base that powers your desktop browser could also live on your phone.

Mike Schroepfer
Vice president of engineering, Mozilla
Age: 33
Location: Palo Alto, Calif.

Shantanu Narayen knew back in 2005 that Flash technology would become much more than a download that allowed you to play fun, time-wasting games. That’s why he co-led the $3.4 billion acquisition of Flash pioneer Macromedia. Today, Flash not only drives YouTube, but it’s quickly becoming one of the determining factors for the viability of smart phones and other types of handheld Internet gadgets.

It’s no wonder Microsoft recently licensed Flash Lite for its Windows Mobile platform. In fact, more than half a billion mobile devices have shipped with the software so far. Narayen, who became CEO in December of 2007, is accelerating Adobe’s mobile evolution even further with new services like Flash Home (a start screen for phones with personalized content) and Flash Cast (an application that caches data to deliver news, traffic, stocks, and weather without surfing the mobile Web).

Add in bold new initiatives like Photoshop Express and the Adobe AIR platform, and you have a CEO who is smart enough to know that his company’s livelihood depends upon thinking outside the boxed software.

Shantanu Narayen
President and CEO, Adobe
Age: 44
Location: San Jose, Calif.

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is no Dell or HP; it doesn’t even hold 1 percent of global notebook market shares. But founder Nicholas Negroponte thinks it could, if he can accomplish his lifetime goal of getting OLPC’s XO laptop into the hands of the world’s children. “This is not a laptop project, it is an educational project,” he has said. But the small, green, low-cost laptop (which he hopes to trim down to $100) running the Sugar Linux operating system with built-in mesh wireless connectivity drives the effort to educate the world’s children.

In fact, $100 is not so important as it is just marketing! The message Negropnte wants to bring to the public is that the future device must be cheap, simple to use and open architecture. In his visit to China, he also urged China to skip 3G and go for open architecture-based converged solution, called 4G.

Nicholas Negroponte
Founder and chairman, One Laptop Per Child
Age: 64
Location: Cambridge, Mass.

All-you-can-eat subscription services were once considered to be a panacea for the struggling music business, but up until now very few consumers have embraced the idea of “renting” their tunes. Doug Morris’ idea? Give it away—temporarily. “Doug wanted to create a concept whereby people could access all the music they want for an X amount of time, and when that time is up, have it roll into a subscription,” said our source inside the Universal Music Group.

We say “source” and not a specific name because as of press time UMG was the subject of a Department of Justice inquiry. The reported reason: fear of collusion on pricing, especially since all of the other major labels are supposedly already on board. (Some have said Total Music would cost as little as $5 per month—$10 less than Rhapsody to Go—but our source denied that figure.)

Also on board is Nokia. The cell phone giant’s new Comes with Music service for cell phones, launching later this year in Europe, is based on Total Music. But in this case customers will be able to hold onto their content indefinitely, even after the year-long all-you-can-eat download party is over. They can also transfer the tunes to a new Nokia phone, even though they’ll be locked down by DRM.

Doug Morris
Chairman and CEO, Universal Music Group
Age: 69
Location: New York, N.Y.