High Speed Internet Access (HSIA): Mobile Internet

The Mobile Internet Report from Morgan Stanley is an excellent and thought provoking read on the huge future expected for mobile Internet and the companies and technologies that will gain and lose.

Mobile Internet is a new cycle in the history of computing. In the 1960s we had mainframe computing, the 70s mini computing, the 80s personal computing, the 90s desktop Internet computing and the next cycle is mobile Internet computing.

Each cycle creates huge wealth for companies who develop and take advantage of emerging technologies. This cycle will be no different and because each cycle reaches more people by a factor of 10, the gains (and losses) that will be experienced are massive.

Mobile Internet isn’t limited to phones and notebooks/laptops. It will include anything that is Internet enabled such as cars, MP3s, e-readers, billboards, appliances etc.

The growth will be huge, more than we probably believe now. 5 products or services are underpinning this growth – the take up of 3G mobile broadband, social networking, video, VoIP and innovations in mobile devices such as smartphones and netbooks. Predictions are that the mobile Internet market will be at least twice the size of the desktop market. Smartphones will outship the notebook market by the end of 2010 and will outship the PC (desktop) market by the end of 2012. Mobile traffic is likely to grow 66 times by 2013. The income from mobile Internet grew by 20% last year at the same time as the global economy declined by 5%.

More significant than the growth predictions is the fact that mobile Internet is game changing and changing rapidly. The adoption of social networking has created a culture where people are always on and always there. Social networking combines the two most important sources of information for people, the Internet and personal. These two sources are more important than TV, radio and newspapers and represent a big opportunity for advertisers and vendors. Mobile Internet offers opportunities for location based services, word of mouth advertising and a way of getting in between user conversations on mobile devices.

Social networking sites such as Facebook are changing the way in which a generation of younger people communicate. Currently, around 17% of Facebook users access the service via a mobile device. This figure is expected to rise to greater than 90% within 5 years. Facebook and other social networking services will be very powerful. Search is likely to play a bigger part within these services as people access repositories of content that are a mix of user generated and professional.

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