Android and iPhone ring the changes – is the mobile web dead?
With the launch of the first phone (The G1) sporting Google’s Android mobile operating system, it’s worth asking a few wider questions about the internet and its convergence with mobile phones.
Analysts have already hailed the iPhone and the G1 as paradigm shifters. In a post titled Touching The Android: It’s No iPhone, But It’s Close Techcrunch said:
“But remember, in the end this is not really about Android versus the iPhone. It’s about Web phones versus the brick in your pocket. Simply matching the iPhone on many of these features—especially Web browsing and email—is going to be enough to help redefine the mobile market. The table stakes have just been raised. From now on, phones need to be nearly as capable as computers. All others need not apply.”
Preliminary stats show the iPhone users push up the aggregate use of the internet on phones dramatically. In fact they are 5 times more likely to use the internet than other phone users.
Why are mobile professionals not that excited at the mo?
Just the other day I spoke to the Head of Mobile at one of the world’s biggest traditional magazine publishers. I asked him, excitedly, if the iPhone does not herald a brave new world for him?
“I’m not so sure.
“It might as well spell the end of the mobile web”
The answer was delivered in a tone of an undertaker.
Confused?
It’s simple really. The G1 and iPhone allows us to browse the web directly. The re-purposed poorer cousin WAP, will be used less and less. Especially in the West and other developed nations.
And the Mobile Web is getting squeezed on two sides. Some websites and services are being tailored to the iPhone and Android. But not as WAP pages.
They are getting tailored versions as applications. Apparently the Facebook Application, is one of the most popular iPhone applications.
Could it be that mobile professionals and companies would do well to look for another job? Or get into apps pronto?
There goes the last portal
Both devices are also bad news for Mobile operator’s control of their decks.
Unlike on the web, in the past Mobile Operators could be real Portals. Portals that control the entrance to the web in a way that the likes of Yahoo!, MSN, and Lycos (remember them?) aspired to but could never achieve.
Now the power of the portal is slipping in Mobile as well. Why? Because its darn easy to go anywhere you please with a normal browser, bigger screen, better keypads and search engines.
AND there is a lot more out there to go to than on the Mobile web.
If the mobile web is under threat what about Mobile advertising? I’ll deal with that in a next post.
5 comments
If “mobile web” means WA, then of course the answer to your question is yes. But another way of seeing convergence is that the whole web will now be mobile. I expect that the growth in web access in the “developing” world will be straight from GPRS to smartphones, leapfrogging the WAP system.
Being open-source, Android will evolve rapidly and could easily dominate the mobile device market in a few years.
‘I expect that the growth in web access in the “developing” world will be straight from GPRS to smartphones, leapfrogging the WAP system.’
Don’t you think the cost would be prohibitive at first Michael? Then again you might have a point. The content available on the open Web is imcomparable to the mobile WAP web, and potentially of imense value in the developing world.
Perhaps we’ll see a $100 smartphone all over Africa before we see Negropontes $100 laptop?
[...] as I mentioned in my previous post. Operator portals are about to start discovering what Yahoo! and MSN did on the web not too long [...]
Of course I meant to say GSM, not GPRS.
On the issue of cost, firstly it will drop steeply once economies of scale kick in, and secondly service providers will subsidise handsets to capture market share. Of course the consumer still pays but over time, and most people don’t think long-term.
Is there a facility for subscribing to ZuluZulu by email? If so I haven’t spotted it.
Nope, not yet. I thought at first that supplying RSS feeds is enough. But your right I need to add email as many still prefer that. Hope to do so over the next few coming days.
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