Mobile internet use growing rapidly

According to a recent IDC Press Release, by 2015 there will more users accessing the internet with mobile devices—smartphones and tablets—than with desktop or laptop computers. I think what’s really happening now is that the ‘computer’ as we know it is being marginalized because it’s not the device that matters—what matters is what people want to do, and the ability to do it wherever they happen to be.

“Forget what we have taken for granted on how consumers use the Internet,” said Karsten Weide, research vice president, Media and Entertainment. “Soon, more users will access the Web using mobile devices than using PCs, and it’s going to make the Internet a very different place.”

I don’t know if the internet is really going to be a ‘very different place’ but I see a few related trends with the move towards greater mobility.

  • Optimized web content. More websites and web applications will be designed specifically for viewing on smaller devices. This should force designers and developers to optimize systems for mobile use and faster network performance.
  • Location-based services. GPS and other tracking technologies will likely grow due to the mobile nature of internet access. (Last night my daughter ran out of gas on the freeway, and as I was driving over to find her I thought it would be really useful if I could pinpoint her location on my iPhone’s maps app so I could find the best point to get on the freeway. I’m sure there’s a way to do this now but I haven’t looked into it—probably Apple’s Find My Friends app will do it.)
  • Secure the data, not the device. Security is a huge concern in the enterprise and a lot of time and money is spent ensuring that mobile devices meet security standards for accessing sensitive data. One result of this is that fewer devices are approved for use—iPhones and Blackberries, for example, can be remotely erased if lost or stolen because that technology is built into the device management. Data encryption is one strategy that could mitigate the hardware concerns and reduce administration overhead.
  • More public wi-fi. Many restaurants and other public places are bringing up free wifi networks to attract the digerati. The network, like its users, will be ubiquitous.
  • Improved battery technology. Faster processors, expanding functionality and frequent network access on these devices requires increasing amounts of power to keep it all running throughout the day. The battery technology has already come a long way and I expect a lot more innovation here to give users more time away from the charger.
  • Cloud-based services. This is one area that is really beginning to mature now, and should grow enormously both for consumers and businesses as users want access to their data regardless of the device being used or its location. This is what Apple is doing with the iCloud service, for example: the data on your iPhone (email, documents, photos, contacts) is synced (optionally, user decides) to offsite storage, and then syncs back out to your other devices (iPad, laptop, desktop). Dropbox and other similar services are doing this now with cloud-based file storage.
  • Fewer corporate data centers. The maturity and reliability of cloud providers will eliminate the need for many companies to have their own data centers. They do it today mostly because of security and control concerns, not because they want to manage hundreds of servers.

 

Posted: October 26th, 2011
Filed under: Handheld, Mobile, Security & Privacy Tags: , , , , , | No Comments »

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