I’m finding increasing interest in the possibilities raised by mobile communications and devices. A survey by Informa Telecoms and Media estimated that there would be over 3 billion mobile phone subscribers throughout the world by the end of 2007. The fastest growing markets are in India, China, Africa and Latin America where slightly older fashioned phones are extremely popular.

Old they may be, but being capable of accessing the Internet has been a basic feature of Western mobile phones for sometime, so these older phones should be able to manage it. Lets face it, when I first regularly started surfing the Web I was using a 75MHz Pentium. Almost any phone sports a far higher specification than that venerable machine. Indeed, if you ignore graphics, most modern phones have a performance close to that seen in desktops only a few years ago.

Even if most of that audience doesn’t subscribe to a package that provides data transfer, and I don’t yet, that’s still a very large potential audience. It started me wondering whether the mobile phone, handheld, smartphone or whatever you want to call the device could become the principle way of accessing the Web in the future.

The personal computer.

As I said above, these devices already have the performance edge on what I considered to be my PC a relatively short time ago… albeit in real everyday world terms. They are capable of running a wide range of applications up to and including Microsoft Windows and Office. Combined with some data services available today rivalling the speed provided by mainstream boardband, let alone dial-up networking, and you’ve got a powerful computing tool.

So why aren’t I using one?

Because there are a few hurdles to jump first.

  1. The price for data transfer and internet access charged by major networks is far too high, but the indications are that it’s going to fall soon.
  2. User interaction is limited by a couple of features:
    • User input is difficult with a phone keyboard, especially if your old like me.
    • Small screens limit the amount of data that can usefully be displayed.

Navigation and user interaction can be simplified and using web standards for website design, improving accessibility on a small screen and useless keyboard.

The download size of mobile websites can be minimised to reduce use of your expensive bandwidth and improve speed. Is this just like the old days of the Web or what?

Ultimately, I think that the mobile Web will be built on web applications customised for mobile devices. The functionality and presentation of these applications could be optimised for mobile users, but more importantly they will be designed to specific jobs for a mobile audience.

For example: Ever used Google Maps to get directions before going on a trip? In the future I bet it will integrate with your phone’s GPS function to guide you there whilst finding you the phone number to let them know your on your way.