TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE FUN...
Despite the decade-long progress in Internet services, networks, software and devices, it remains a fact of life that the mobile Internet is a shadow of the PC Internet. No question, we've come a long way in terms of the power of mobile phones and PDAs, the speed of the networks, and the content and services to consume on them, but the web on a phone or PDA remains distinctly disappointing relative to the web on a PC or laptop.
Much of this belly-aching I believe is uniquely American. Most companies with any business related to the Internet continue to be lured globally by the numbers of mobile phones vs. the number of PCs worldwide, where the gap continues to get wider in favor of the phones. In many countries, like China, the only Internet consumers have known is through the mobile phone. In fact, the US is unique in that we have more Internet consumers via the PC than mobile phone customers (200 million vs. 180 million).
In every other major market, the numbers markedly favor mobile phones. As a result, US users invariably feel a sense of disappointment when they do anything Internet related on a mobile phone, whereas, in other parts of the world, the usual reaction is "wow, cool".
One of my favorite bloggers in the mobile space is Russell Beattie, who manages mobile products and services at Yahoo! and has a terrific mobile blog. He's had two posts in recent days that brought much of the mobile web issue to mind for me. They're titled the "Sad State of the Mobile Web" and "Getting to the Mobile Web", and I recommend them both if you have an interest in this area.
In particular, he outlines the seven key practical issues facing web site operators as they contemplate providing mobile web services. There's a well-thought out and articulated discussion on each, with the ultimate conclusion being that there isn't an ideal answer here.
In an earlier post dated March 18, "Broadband to go", I highlighted the best device in my opinion available in the US, that comes closest to giving us the PC web on a mobile device. It's the Audiovox PDA phone with Verizon EV-DO broadband service pictured below.
The intermediate answer may be that in the US anyway, PDAs and/or "handtop" PCs that can display at least VGA quality graphics, powered by desktop operating systems and high-speed wireless broadband, may do better than in other markets.
Business issues may also dictate which type of mobile device wins market share, as highlighted by the recent tug of war between Apple/Motorola and the US wireless carriers over consumers downloading their music over PCs vs. their phones.
The units favor the carriers, but the utility, convenience, and economics favor the PC/laptop/handtop/PDA platforms, particularly they are lesser "walled garden" platforms than cell phones.
The carriers, especially in the US, will be increasingly pressured from five directions to open up their platforms:
- Consumers, who will demand more access, at affordable, generally flat pricing to the web via their mobile device.
- The handset manufacturers, who need to increasingly behave like their PC brethren to keep their price points high in a Moore's law driven commodity business, i.e., stuff in more functionality at the same or lower price. This means cram in hard drives, faster processors, more memory, better input systems, chipsets that support multiple wireless networks (traditional cell of all flavors, next gen wireless broadband, Wi-fi, Blue-tooth, Wimax, etc.), better screens, bigger/better batteries, GPS, etc.
- Advertisers, who will increasingly demand similar breadth and depth of inventory they are getting on the PC-driven web. They are already spending 5% of their advertising budgets online, and liking it.
- Online content and service providers, who also will drive the availability of their offerings onto every type of mobile device off the PC.
- Internet telephony applications will increasingly be demanded to be run on mobile devices by consumers and providers like Skype, who will expect the same cost/quality of VOIP service on their mobile device as they get on their PCs/laptops.
All this means the wireless phone business, despite their many unique characteristics, will be flattened from vertical to horizontal, just like the wired phoned business has been over the last decade. In the meantime, US consumers especially will have to make do with smaller PC based mobile devices to run the kind of apps they need.
Possible devices like the Flipstart PC (click picture for larger image), funded by Paul Allen's Vulcan Capital, may be the answer, but they need to support high-speed EV-DO broadband networks first from the wireless carriers.In the meantime, I'll be keeping my mobile phone separate from wireless web surfing, at least until the mobile web is partially, if not totally eclipsed by PC web driven economics.
Wireless data is way too expensive for retail customers, as I think most of the wireless data plans are targeted towards business customers. At $25/month, I feel I'm one of the lucky ones who has unlimited GSM/GPRS data access from AT&T. New Cingular Plans start at 25 bucks / 5MB and go all the way to 50 for unlimited, which I think is a ripoff. 50 bucks for what? And may be EDGE-enabled phones (I have a SonyEricsson P900) have even any use for higher bandwidth plans. For lower bandwidth, the usage is very limited. So, the bottom line is, pricey plans and pricey phones that can use these plans, not to mention spotty coverage - make the wireless apps not much of anything. Because of all this, and the generally backward mentality of US telcos, mobile content is in a disarray. Add to the fact that the providers want to control how people access the mobile portals, and you've got a complete mess. Funny thing is that not even the upstarts like T-Mobile want to do anything about this to differentiate themselves from the fat, dumb and happy big boys.
Posted by: Sunil Chhaya | Tuesday, April 26, 2005 at 10:56 PM
1.Mobile to PC (SMS Ok)
2.PC to Mobile (SMS Fail)
Posted by: Vivek Rai | Wednesday, December 21, 2005 at 10:19 AM