Forum Moderators: phranque
Google vice president and chief Internet evangelist Vinton G. Cerf has predicted that mobile phones, not personal computers, will fuel growth of the worldwide web as countries like India snap up millions of handsets monthly. From 50 million in 1997, the number of people who have logged onto the Internet has exploded to nearly 1.1 billion, Cerf, who is considered one of the founding fathers of the Internet, said Tuesday.Yet, the Internet only reaches a sixth of the world's population, Cerf told reporters during a visit to this southern city, known as India's Silicon Valley, where Google has a research and development facility.
emails is about it for phones I think
The new phones are running pretty close to stock browsers. I run a copy of Opera browser on mine, and the Pocket Internet Explorer is on the verge of a major upgrade. Those upgrades will bring it close to inline with the desktop code base.
That combined with the expansion of EVDO/3g access points, has made surfing on the phone quite usable today.
Cell phone are used to surf, send email, send text, make cash transfers, store and listen to music, video, etc.
“Out of the 6.5 billion people on the planet, less than one billion have a bank account. The only way to sustainably serve these people is through mobile communications,
Mobile communications operators and banks joined forces on Monday to make it easier and cheaper for hundreds of millions of immigrants and migrant workers to send money home by using their mobile phones.
…people can load cash on their mobile, and order it to be sent to a mobile phone number in another country, where the recipient receives a message that money has arrived, making it as easy as sending a text message Full Story [today.reuters.com]
Cell phone widgets are already here.
By using new programming tools or rethinking existing ones, companies at this week’s DEMO emerging technologies conference claim they can replicate familiar aspects of today’s desktop computing on the phone’s small screen.These modules might contain video clips and other interactive features. Users can access them through a slicker graphical interface rather than the text-heavy menus often used to bring content onto cell phones. By using new programming tools or rethinking existing ones, companies at this week’s DEMO emerging technologies conference claim they can replicate familiar aspects of today’s desktop computing on the phone’s small screen.
These modules might contain video clips and other interactive features. Users can access them through a slicker graphical interface rather than the text-heavy menus often used to bring content onto cell phones. Full Story [msnbc.msn.com]
and teens and college students are now the wireless generation, leaving the wired generation chained to a PC.
Many college students have abandoned wired connections for wireless ones, and a survey by The American Advertising Federation (AAF) found that 69 percent of high school teens own cell phones. The youth market tends to be quite interested in products with short life cycles, such as music and movies. These products generate a lot of advertising because companies need to quickly create a buzz as new products arrive.
Which is why Vodafone was quick to sign a deal with Gootube to allow users to upload and view videos via cell phone [themoneytimes.com].
Email is it eh? Push technology has already been embraced in places like Korea and Australia and Yahoo is pushing ads to cell phone users in 19 countries [mlive.com] using its OneSearch application.
Already been done:
[entertainmentearth.com...]
QR, or quick response, codes are a similar to bar codes except they are square, look a bit like an ink blot and contain much more information. In Japan and South Korea, QR codes are used to link directly to a Web site, as in the case of the subway poster, saving the user the need to type an address on the tiny keypad of the phone. As marketers seek an edge on competitors, QR codes are appearing practically everywhere in Japan.QR codes are now popping up on Japanese business cards, allowing somebody to snap a picture with a cellphone and save the bother of entering a new contact's information. Last month, McDonald's began putting the codes directly on food packaging so that Japanese diners could get nutrition information instantly.
I just upgraded to an EVDO phone (LG VX9900), and for the first time this looks usable. Sites just snap up. (Similar speeds are in the offing for GSM users - EVDO is for CDMA networks - e.g. Sprint & Verizon in the U.S.)
I don't see the screen size as being a serious limitation. Sites just have to be designed specifically for mobile use.
For example - though not a web site, but a carrier-provided service - Verizon's Navigator service is a good example of what can be done with a tiny screen. This is a navigation service that uses the phone's built-in GPS-A receiver (requires assistance from the carrier - the phone has a cheesy, minimal GPS receiver, the carrier combines info from the phone's GPS receiver with location info from their tower, and compuing power provided by the carrier). I found it quite usable.
Getting back to the display issue, my phone has two displays - a small external display, and a larger one when you open the clamshell (it has an alphanumeric keyboard when you open the clamshell). Navigator knows which display is in use and tailors it's graphics to the screen you are using. It's perfectly practical to navigate using only the tiny outside display, since they only display large arrow graphics on that display.
It's important, BTW, to distinguish between phones that have a browser and smart phones, like Brett's. The latter is basically a PDA with a built-in phone. They're becoming popular status symbols, but I have to laugh at the housewives talking on these bulky monsters at the supermarket. These things look incredibly silly when you are talking on them. :)
The smart phones give you a great deal of versatility, however, and you can even choose to install an alternative browser.
But the bulk of the market is and will continue to be "unsmart" phones which will increasingly have a fixed browser built in whether the user wants it or not. This is a vast untapped market, IMO. Millions of people with browsers that they never use. The browsers are now pretty capable, when accessing a site designed for mobile use. I think there is a huge opportunity in coming up with sites that are compelling enough to get people to open the browser.
