The mobile Internet: Are we there yet?

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I was just in Circuit City the other day...: ...and the LG phone the in-store Verizon guy was pitching to me had everything that the Japanese kids are into: the Web (email) and SMS. Plus storage for downloaded music/ring tones and a camera. What they have that we don't have (yet) is a better network. But, as the article indicated, its not a question of if a higher-speed network will get here but when.

Competition will drive down prices with increasing adoption just as it has for everything else. We're already in a price war between cable and the telcos (in my neck of the woods, DSL now costs 40% of what it did just 3 years ago). You don't think the same thing will happen in mobile services as well? Of course it will.

What's most interesting, actually, is that all the Japanese kids really want is SMS and email (with a bit of music and ringtones thrown in). They're really into text messaging over the phone. It's to this generation what IRC was to mine...the "killer app" that caused people to really start using their home PCs on a daily basis instead of letting them sit there gathering dust after the novelty wore off. Only for the new generation, the PC has been replaced.

However, this whole phenomenon is not relegated to the Youth Market...I've got many clients in the real estate industry who have faithfully followed their productivity suite publishers as they moved from a Windows/LAN-based solution to an Internet-based/mobile-enabled one, largely ditching their laptops/desktops for cell phones and PDAs. They haven't completely gotten rid of the ol' Dell, but they now spend most of their time on the phone doing stuff they used to have to do on the PC.; Posted by: UserLand Posted on: 08/29/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use