Subscribe in a readerEra of the Mobile WebPosted by ahc99 on October 18th, 2008
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The Economist recently published an article on how the mobile web has sort of taken on a life of it’s own. They believe that in the future, most new internet users will be in developing countries and will use mobile phones.
I believe that future has already arrived. Last year when I went to Shanghai, China on a scholarship I saw almost everyone carry a mobile phone, from corporate executives that make $200 USD a day to farmers that make $100 USD per month. This is a country in which the poor accounts for nearly 80% of the population yet almost everyone I met could afford a cell phone.
Part of the reason could be attributed to globalization, which has drastically undercut the cost of most electronic toys. But another big reason is that the infrastructure for mobile anything is already in place. As long as a signal from a tower or satellite can travel to the far reaches of the globe, you can probably find a person there using a cell phone and surfing the web. Phones are not like most PCs that need an actual cable in order to hooked up with the rest of the world, instead all you need is a signal. Mobile phones have made communication and data transfers both cheap and easy.
Startling statistics from the article support this growing trend of mobile web users:
The simple answer is that the number of mobile phones that can access the internet is growing at a phenomenal rate, especially in the developing world. In China, for example, over 73m people, or 29% of all internet users in the country, use mobile phones to get online. And the number of people doing so grew by 45% in the six months to June—far higher than the rate of access growth using laptops, according to the China Internet Network Information Centre.
This year China overtook America as the country with the largest number of internet users—currently over 250m. And China also has some 600m mobile-phone subscribers, more than any other country, so the potential for the mobile internet is enormous.
It is not just China. Opera Software, a firm that makes web-browser software for mobile phones, reports rapid growth in mobile-web browsing in developing countries. The number of web pages viewed in June by the 14m users of its software was over 3 billion, a 300% increase on a year earlier. The fastest growth was in developing countries including Russia, Indonesia, India and South Africa.
Furthermore, for many people around the globe, a mobile web is just a cheaper solution of getting access to the Internet:
Xuehui Zhao, a recent graduate of the Anyang Institute of Technology in Henan province, explains that a typical monthly package for five yuan ($0.73) includes 10 megabytes of data transfer—more than enough to allow her to spend a couple of hours each day surfing the web and instant-messaging with friends. It is also much cheaper than paying 200 yuan per month for a fixed-broadband connection.
Just a few years ago, cell phones were only used to conveniently place calls where ever you were located. But now there are increasingly elaborate data services available for consumers to buy. For example, just with my T-Mobile plan I can add text-messaging, instant messaging, limited web services, unlimited web services, email services, ringtone customization services, and GPS services. And I don’t even have a smartphone, the data services available on those are much more intricate.
Besides services you can buy, the uses of the mobile phone has multiplied exponentially over the years. I can use my phone to place calls, take photos, share photos, stream videos, triangulate my location, get web updates through RSS, write/check emails, send text messages, send instant messages (though AIM, ICQ, Yahoo!, Google, MSN), surf the web, check bank accounts, etc… The choices are unlimited. If someone has thought of a way to use the mobile phone, it probably has already been implemented. And if it hasn’t been, it will likely be done within the next few months. Like the article says, a “wave of innovation” should arrive soon with this growth in mobile phone users.
Now, I am happy about all of this happening, but I am just curious, as a side effect of this growth, how many more e-mails from Nigeria should I be expecting asking for my bank account number so they can wire me hundreds of millions of dollars. I can’t wait, how about you?
October 18th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
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