Extremism
This is not a post about terrorists or fanatics, but more about people needing to believe an absolute truth, to classify things into particular spaces and then refuse to contemplate evidence that contradicts the current classification.
So, what exactly is 'the mobile internet'? Is it, as many people try to tell us, accessing information over a mobile phone? Or is it just accessing the internet while in a temporary location? Or, is it accessing the internet while physically moving between 2 points?
What information is exclusively on the mobile internet? What particular access methods are only available to mobile? What services only apply to the mobile internet? (hint: access speed and size of screen are NOT discriminators)
I found Alec Saunders article particularly interesting because his traffic on the Mosquito Ringtone suggests that there are a lot of people out there accessing Alec's blog who are lookng for ringtones (mobile content). Are these people accessing Alec's blog through their mobile phones?
I seriously doubt it, although no doubt some people would probably claim that this shows that huge numbers of people are browsing using their mobiles!
The internet is now just a distribution mechanism, and the 'last mile' for people (or devices) to connect to that is increasingly varied.
But it is not siloed. There is not one internet for mobiles and one for fixed, one for commerce and one for free. That was at least part of the reason that WAP failed.
Applications such as Skype have proved that it is hard to control what and who can get to where, once access has been established.
People will choose the best method of connecting to the internet depending on their location and circumstances. I don't mean the fastest connection, I mean the one with least friction. If my phone data connection is efficient, fast, cheap and 'just works', then there is minimal friction to using it ubiquitously. If my device pops up a window and offers me cheaper WiFi at a fraction of the price, then I will probably switch to a WiFi connection. In the same way that the people accessing Alec's ringtone story switched from their mobiles to their PC in order to find ringtones.
There's no (or very little) barrier to entry in offering a service on the internet; the services are what I want, not a specific flavour of the 'last mile'. i.e. I want a ringtone, not a mobile-phone only data service.
More & more, the platforms are soft, the network is agnostic, and the customer is not equal to the subscription (or even the device - but the device still has some mileage, unlike subscription)
The mobile internet is a false god, there is only one way, one light. There is only one internet.
There are many services, but they should be about people, not devices...
(Disclaimer: I do not advocate any violent acts against purveyors of mobile internet, they should be peacefully convinced of the Truth through declining revenues and share prices)
5 Comments:
The selctivity of access mode is probably the reason why Mobile ESPN (an MVNO) is not taking the postiion that they had planned. Given the choice at 7pm am I going to use my mobile to watch baseball or log on the ESPN service on my cable modem or ADSL?
A lot of services are developed specifically for mobile, rather than just addressing the internet. As your post earlier said, if they concentrated on the reasons why their main content might want to be accessed on the move, they might have been more successful.
People do want 'bite-size', but the need is not driven by the device used to get it, the device merely restricts the quality of the service.
Great post and insight, Paul! It is too easy to forget that PEOPLE actually are active participants in all this ... not just "end users" connected to a "device".
Hi Paul and readers of the Extremism blogsite.
Nice to find your blog, Paul, and thanks for the reference even if meant as me being one of those misguided individuals.
Let me stir the pot a bit. The fixed internet has been around for 30 years, and a mass market proposition for the past 12 years since Time put the internet on its cover in 1994.
The mobile internet became viable only at the advent of digital cellular in 1992 and became a mass market proposition in 1999 at the lauch of iMode in Japan (although SMS and ringing tones had been around a bit longer in Scandinavia)
So the mobile internet is the young brother.
In terms of users. Today there are 1.05 billion internet users (according to the Computer Information Almanac). These do not all access via a PC, as in three big countries - Japan, China and South Korea, more people access the web via a mobile phone than via a PC - and notice South Korea is the world's leading broadband country with Japan in the top 5, so these are not technically backwater countries...
But I digress. Out of 2.5 billion mobile phone users, 72% already use SMS text messaging actively - that means (drumroll) 1.8 BILLION users of SMS text messaging worldwide. More than twice as many people use SMS than use e-mail.
And please don't suggest SMS is somehow "not real" mobile internet. Surely e-mail is a real internet application, for most PC owners, e-mail was the "killer application" up to two years ago, today arguably search/Google has taken that position.
So in less than twice the time, the mobile internet has already found twice as many users on its most popular service, as the traditional PC based "fixed" internet had been able to generate in its time.
Then you seem dismissive of ringing tones. It is billable content on the mobile internet. Yes, its youth-oriented, and yes, very frivolous. But bear in mind, that the three biggest revenue-earners of content revenues on the fixed internet are in this order: adult entertainment, gambling, and advertising !
On the mobile internet the three classes of largest content are ringing tones, videogames and downloadable logos/screen savers. While frivolous yes, I would argue the mobile internet is massively more economically sound, if the top content is not adult entertainment, gambling and advertising - all of which of course also exists on the mobile internet.
What of the future? Google says that the future of search is on mobile phones not PC based internet. The music industry says that the future of digital music downloads is on mobile phones, rather than PC and iPod based platforms. e-mail? Check out any Blackberry addicts and consider will the future of e-mail migrate to PCs or pocketable devices.
How about blogging? 19% of American teenagers maintain a blogsite. But already 90% of South Korean teenagers maintain a MOBILE blogsite.
I could go on and on and on.
Both internets will continue to exist, but the inevitable trend is that devices, users, content and revenues all will migrate from the fixed internet (where it is difficult to make money) to the mobile internet (where billing is built-in).
More at my blogsite at the link you posted.
Tomi Ahonen :-)
4-time bestselling author
lecturing at Oxford University on digital convergence
website www.tomiahonen.com
amount of active users of the mobile internet are already (drumroll)
Gavin, Tomi,
Thanks for commenting.
Tomi, I think you missed the point I was trying to make. I don't deny that there are more people using mobile phones to access 'the internet', and I don't deny that SMS is a very successful communication service, definitely not frivolous and I used to send upwards of 10 a day back in 2001-2.
What I am saying is that people just want internet services, they don't really care which device or network they access them on. If I want a ringtone for my mobile, will I always go the mobile route to get it? No, especially if I can access the ringtone site over WiFi on my phone and download it that way.
Is that the mobile internet? It's WiFi, it's probably linked to my fixed ADSL connection, but I'm using it through my phone.
The distinction is blurred and my conclusion, though extreme (btw Tomi, this is the Produktivity blog, not Extremism!), is that there is only one internet, and services should be, and eventually will be agnostic.
Does this mean that SMS will die? Well, SMS is the interesting case. Is SMS a service in itself, or is it just IM on mobile phones? Once something like Skype is available on mobiles, SMS will start to decline, because the service will be available cheaper and through a better interface.
IP is the bearer of choice for most services (soon to include voice in that list) and IP will be available most places that people want to use these services.
Mobile devices will be the platform of choice for access to the network (I'm not arguing that point), but the access will not be controlled by the traditional mobile phone operators.
There is a separation of access and content happening and the mobile operators are losing control of their customers.
So, access is mobile and multiple, content is universal.
I don't think that we disagree fundamentally, just slightly different religions...
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