Via Carnival of the Mobilists, some thoughts on what's likely to happen as people access the Internet more and more via mobile phones. I'm not certain that the stats say what the author professes they say, but it's an interesting article nonetheless:
So returning to my question. What happens when the majority of internet access is done with a mobile phone? It will not take long for the Amazons, Ebays, Googles, AOLs and Yahoos to discover that their users are more accessing via mobile phone than via PC. They will adjust their content to work on the phone and optimize for the small screen rather than for the PC screen.Posted by dcoates at April 28, 2006 11:31 AM
Sound implausible? Think again. Only 14 years ago the majority of internet access devices were mainframe computers. At that time the web content standard was something called "Gopher". Today nobody formats for Gopher because the internet PC browsers (first was Mosaic, then Netscape, now Microsoft's Internet Explorer) became the predominant access devices.
That is bound to change. The trends are irreversible. The sooner you understand this coming change, the more you can capitalize on this transition both personally, and professionally. Spot the trends now, and be one of the early visionaries to this inevitable future.
Oh, and if you work for a content provider, consider these facts: There are three times as many mobile phones as PCs. Twice as many people use SMS text messaging as use e-mail. Users on the traditional PC based internet expect content to be free, but mobile phone users expect mobile content to be paid-for. Collecting money on the traditional fixed wireline internet is very cumbersome. Collecting money on the mobile internet is built-in. The world's biggest internet company by revenues is not one of the internet darlings - Google, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon or AOL. It is Japanese mobile operator NTT DoCoMo's domestic mobile internet arm, i-Mode. And i-Mode alone makes bigger profits than the five internet darlings combined. Where will you put your best content? On the mobile internet of course.
Hi Deb and readers of Deb's Blog
Thank you for picking up on the story. I hear you that the stats may seem a bit surprising. But they are all catalogued rather extensively at our blogsite.
I won't go over all of them here except for the ones you mention in your excerpt in declining order of size:
Mobile phone population 2.1 Billion at end of 2005 source IDC
SMS use 1.3 Billion at end of 2005 source adapted from Informa (from usage percentage at 62% of all mobile phone users active SMS users)
Internet users 950 Million at end of 2005 source Internet World Stats
PCs in use 750 Million at end of 2005 source ITU
e-mail users 668 Million (note these users maintain 1.2 Billion mailboxes) source Radicati
Annual Revenues and Profits Google, Ebay, Amazon, Yahoo, AOL (as accounted by AOL-TimeWarner) and i-Mode (Japan domestic only) by NTT DoCoMo: latest annual reports at about end of 2005 ie fourth quarter or third quarter data whichever was latest.
When you work out the numbers, yes, with a bit of rounding off, twice as many use SMS as use e-mail. Three times as many have mobile phones as have PCs. Etc.
I've tracked these numbers since my first book came out on 3G telecoms, and since then had four bestselling hardcover telecoms/IT books. I'm also regularly quoted by the mainstream business press on these numbers from Financial Times and Economist to Wall Street Journal and Business Week and national business press in over a dozen countries. And I regularly comment on these matters in my articles and columns appearing in the telecoms press like Telecommunications, European Communications, Total Telecom, 3G Mobile etc.
The amazing part is that there is a huge shift going on right now. The old way of accessing the internet is that using the PC. The new way is that using the mobile phone. PCs cost typically about 1000 dollars and are replaced every 3.5 years (source: calculated from Computer Information Almanac). Mobile phones are often subsidised by which they are "free" to acquire, and are replaced every 21 months (source: calculated from Informa). Even more so - young employed people, like 20% of Europeans - have two phones (source: calculated from Informa). Thus the effective replacement cycle is 11 and a half months. You wait for your new laptop almost four years, but get a new smartphone every year.
How long does it take before we discover that we can do almost all of our e-mail, web browsing, music downloads, picture blogging, etc on our smartphone. How soon will we stop even considering getting one of those cumbersome devices they used in the past, called a laptop computer...
Also consider this. A smartphone today is as powerful as a low range laptop 5 years ago, a top-end desktop 10 years ago, a mainframe computer 15 years ago and a supercomputer 20 years ago.
The young people of today have no problem with small screens and using text entry on a mobile phone.
The majority of web access will be on the mobile phone. As it already is in China, Korea and Japan. The key point for us in the industry is to understand this shift, and to capture the money opportunities in it (like I wrote in my second book, m-Profits in the chapter on Money Migration)
Thanks for referencing the story. I hope the above references helped you also be more comfortable with my sources, that they are reasonable and reliable sources, ha-ha...
Tomi T Ahonen
4-time bestselling author and consultant
founding member Forum Oxford, Carnival of the Mobilists, Wireless Watch and Engagement Alliance
website www.tomiahonen.com
blogsite www.communities-dominate.blogs.com
Sorry Deb
Typo in the stats. The first stat 2.1 Billion should eb MOBILE PHONES, not PCs, with source IDC
(if you can correct it into the above message, please do. I'm afraid someone goes to report that number, and would hate to be used as the source for 2.1 billion PCs in use when I meant mobile phones, ha-ha)
Sorry about that. Sometimes you cannot see what you were writing...
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen on April 28, 2006 12:34 PMThanks, Tomi, for taking the time to stop by and for the additional stats!
I agree that mobile phones are a huge trend in Internet access, partly for a reason you mention--that they are 'always on' in a way that PCs aren't and are more convenient in many situations than even a laptop.
(will also post the correction you noted in the first comment...)
Posted by: Deb on April 28, 2006 12:37 PM