Mobile Computing: Putting Importance on Efficiency once more?

Question

I've been getting my hands dirty lately working on development for the iPhone. Development on this platform adds (and on others I am sure) considerations that are not there when developing for desktop computers

1. Battery life (need to keep cpu/network or any hardware usage to a min to preserve battery life)
2. Reducing Network traffic (most people pay by the amount of network traffic)
3. Reducing memory foot print ( mobile phones don't have GBs of RAM and GBs of swap space that we are used on the desktop)
4. Fast load and quit time ( people who use mobile phone apps usually only have it running for a short time, so can't afford to wait as long as they would on a desktop)

Since mobile computing is all the rave these days, does this mean designing and writing efficient software will once again become an indispensable skill a Software Developer must have as it was in the early days of personal computing?

Answer 1

Not especially: the biggest effect is simply that it limits/constrains your choice of framework and/or of high-level programming language.

I think that any mobile phone already has far more memory and computing power that an early personal computer did.