Sean Aune, the editor-in-chief of TechnoBuffalo, talked  with Mark Hopkins about some of the more notable current and future trends in the mobile industry (see full interview below). As Mark highlighted about half way into the interview, the mobile industry is a completely different animal than other consumer electronics markets, such as the PC industry (which has been taking a hit from the growing adoption of smartphones and tablets, and even the occasional phablet).

One of the first things Aune highlighted is webOS. He’s a fan of the OS, but believes that HP failed to take its investment in the right direction in terms of development, marketing and not being able to recognize what the mobile market really wants among other aspects.

Now, however, the platform has been open-sourced, and a strong community may be able to flesh it out so that it will become the third in line after Android and iOS. It’s a platform for all intents and purposes; HP sees webOS becoming an HTML5 browser or even a secondary layer running on top of Android somewhere down the road.

Either way, Sean believes that the open element has a lot of potential. It can be partially credited with the success of Google’s own smartphone OS, which exceeded all expectations by becoming the most prominent mobile OS out there. Android devices are still stirring buzz and setting new trends, with Samsung’s Galaxy Note being one of the best and most recent examples.

Android has its down sides, too. Sean commented on how fragmentation is a big issue for the ecosystem right now, and that there needs to be a flagship product of sorts – a device with a distinctive market edge – that other vendors will be able to use as a role model. He believes this device will surface in the tablet arena, possibility coming from the direction of Amazon.

The almost on hour-long conversation drifted to other related topics as well, including set-top boxes and, naturally, the personal cloud.