A few years ago we had the ‘mobile web’ and plenty of forecasters expected this ecosystem to match the internet in terms of size, scale, depth of information, and perhaps supercede it, as mobile devices are so personal, ubiquitous and, of course, mobile. But that doesn’t seem to have happened. The web, like a more flexible and agile virus, seems to be swallowing up mobile, and in the last few months the explosion in mobile apps has been one highly visible symptom of mobile adopting an internet approach, with the i-phone of course leading the way:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10286279-37.html
The operators are finally starting to bring their responses to the market. The world’s two biggest operators by subscribers, Vodafone and China Mobile, who between them have 770 million customers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operators), are developing and app store that could potentially reach 1 billion customers over time (or more realistically 200 million+ smartphones):
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_31/b4141024521443.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech
And surely Symbian, which runs the OS on Nokia, SE and other smartphones, will be competing soon:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10250094-16.html
Not to mention Android, OVI, and others…
http://www.rethink-wireless.com/?article_id=1756 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10250094-16.html
It will be interesting to see whether the operators can catch up with Apple – they have a daily contact with their users, can they change internal mindsets fast enough to embrace the internet before Apple entrenches its market leading position….?
It’s hard to imagine the mobile operators having the digital savvy and entrepreneurial flair to compete with Apple and Google but hey, they have amazing scale, will the app developers figure it our for themselves or will they come flooding to a platform made by say Telefonica, who just launched a new mobile app platform with 1000 apps today Sep 10th. Apple and Google have years of experience of partnering and driving developer communities, you can’t buy that . . . . can you?