Will the Mobile really be the future device of the Internet?

Many people often confuse the internet with the "web". In fact, the "web" — the pages you and I see when we are online — is one of many applications supported by the internet. Since the commercial availability of the internet in 1989, the percentage of the world's population going online has increased dramatically. Current estimates indicate that one-sixth of the world's population is now online. Given this level of growth, it is not beyond reality that we may see over three billion people online by 2010 — that's nearly half of the world's population!

This anticipated growth can be attributed to two main factors — mobile technology and the increased localisation of content. With approximately two and a half billion mobile users across the world (many more people than have access to a personal computer), the scope for internet access via the mobile is huge. It also gets around the problem of access to a fixed line, which in the developing world is often limited to the wealthy few in urban areas. According to estimates by the World Bank, more than two-thirds of the world's population lives within range of a mobile phone network.
I'm not sure I agree in total with this analysis - at least the mobile bit...in that I agree with Vint re the potential, just not certain if the mobile industry today is correctly structured to deliver the Internet promise.

I think it has 3 main barriers on the device side, and 3 on the network side:

On the device side, in my view mobile suffers from:

- Form factor - most mobile devices are not fit for purpose for internet usage in any serious way, and PCs are also more powerful gear, you can simply do more with it. In developing countries where its mobile or nothing then a mobile will do - but it's not an endgame. I am told that many have already discovered that "western" (ie designed primarily for OECD use cases) phones are not fit for purpose as mobile IP devices and Chineses and Indian entrereneurs are now building mobile internet devices that are increasingly more laptop than phone.

- Standards - mobile is like the PC industry pre MS DOS, PC's have huge economies of scale - there are not in fact 2.5 billion mobiles out there, vs 1.5 bn PC's - the mobile stack splits by operator and phone, giving a plethora of different subsystems such that an application built for one cannot necessarily run on another.

- "Mobile Web 2.0" structurally cannot happen in the walled gardens beloved of mobile operators. This doesn't matter so much early up but starts to matter as the applications become more widespread and powerful

The main disadvantage of the PC vs mobile as an IP device right now is price, but given the standardisation in the PC world I would hypothesize that getting a boned down laptop/pda to a decent price point is very possible compared to adding functionality to mobile phones.

On the network side, the assumption that fixed line is dead is risky...I recall this being trumpeted 3-4 years ago in conferences in the UK and US, about the end of (Western) fixed line Telcos....same rhetoric is now being bandied about the developing world. I don't buy it as it is only significantly cheaper to roll out wireless IP networks (per MB served) than fixed line if the following is true:

- there is low population density - people packed into apartment blocks are cheap to wire up if labour costs are low.

- you have to dig up roads, not just loop wires over poles (looping wires uses cheap local labour and very little western capital equipment)

- the bandwidth takeup is fairly low - the aether has a limit to bits that can be transported, the ground does not. Pumping phone calls through it is one thing, pumping broadband content is another

One could argue that in the past a key reason mobile telephony took off was perhaps more due to state (and internal) bureaucracy impeding the national telco's activity (and/or governments auctioning spectrum for currency with a guaranteed non compete period) rather than any de facto economic rationale. But, as more and more Fixed Line Telcos have the shackles removed the competition hots up, mobile arpu falls, and the business cases are less viable.

There are 2 key further things I can see on the Network side for the future of mobile (as opposed to wireless) networks looking less rosy are mainly:

- bandwidth....when dsl was 500 kb per sec and 3G was 384 kb per sec, the difference could be ignored. Now there is an order of maginitude, its not so easy - and the fixed line economics in high density cities (typical of the developing world), where cable can be looped on poles and labour is low cost, are not so much worse than mobile.

- competition from other wireless technologies. If one was rolling out a wireless IP network today in a greenfield situation, would one use mobile technology?

What this implies to me is that a simple mobile transport / mobile device based architecture is a very simplistic way of thinking about the developing world, and the truth is likely to be a much more heterogeneous, especially in the big cities. (Mobile is key in rural areas, but the population - and usually money - are mainly, and increasingly, in cities)

Do mobile networks have a part to play - absolutely. Ditto mobile phones. Will the developing world's IP be on mobiles medium term - no, or at least not the mobile phone device as we understand it today.

So what will it be like? It will need to have more input functionality, and very probably a bigger screen.

The one device form factor I really like is the Nintendo DS Lite, with 2 screens, one that doubles up as a touch keypad. Another option is to separate input keypad from device, so one can carry a pad around to plug into a 'phone (not a very successful option in mobile consumer electronics to date though). The Blackberry style - screen plus keypad - is another obvious form factor, as is the iPhone design with configurable keypads.

What can be expected is a lot of experimentation over the next few years to get this device's form factor optimised.