Summary
Mobile Internet use is growing extremely quickly in US and Europe (Japan made their move in this direction years ago). This presents enormous opportunities for device makers of all sorts, service providers and carriers, and for businesses to find new ways to take advantage of the technologies. With all that turmoil also comes challenges and heartaches for some.
Analysis
At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on October 20, Mary Meeker and team at Morgan Stanley presented a market analysis about the trends in the technology industry with a particular emPHAsis on the prospects for and impact of mobile computing. Here's a link to the full report called "Economy + Internet Trends":
The report states, among other things, that mobile wireless uses of technology are the biggest driver of enormous growth in usage, especially in US and Europe. At the same time carriers face surging demand they face uncertain economics.
Mobile internet is growing in penetration and use far faster than desktop internet and somewhat faster than mobile internet grew in Japan (they're years ahead of everyone else on this). AT&T itself has seen a 50x growth in mobile data traffic over the past three years.
Competition is fierce in the mobile market. The carriers are competing to put in place the broadest 3G networks possible. Sprint advertises about 4G. Verizon advertises against AT&T by mimicking the iPhone ads with ads saying "there's a map for that" (referring to their claim of broader national 3G service. At the same time VOIP is eroding revenues for POTS (plain old telephone service) and WiFi competition is selectively attacking the 3G networks.
As Meeker et al dryly put it, "massive technology changes typically shift dynamics between incumbents and attackers creating winners and losers. This happened from the mid-90's into the early 2000's as the then-extant Baby Bells, AT&T, then a long distance company, and other long distance providers like MCI, and the large cable providers all invested at the same time in bringing high speed, multi-purpose networking to homes and businesses (there's a fine Mercer Management Consulting report on this). We now have cable-internet and FIOS and an enormous surplus of fiber optic infrastructure, and many corporate failures and restructurings for those who could not last the battle.
Remember, Japan has already run through the challenges of defining and monetizing a mobile internet industry. If their experiences are a guide expect that competition will quickly move away from a concentration on access. Verizon's "there's a map for that" ads are fine for right now, but winners will discover how to offer and be paid for mobile commerce, mobile advertising, and related services.
Access to a network and the ability to move data will be assumed, a relative commodity. Doing something with that capability will be the trick.
