The Second Wave of Mobile Web Users is Coming

When you sit in a restaurant and see how non-geeks at the next table check their Facebook accounts on their smartphones before the food arrives; if your colleagues to whom you have preached for years about the benefits of mobile e-mail and mobile web browsing without much success suddenly ask you which phone they should buy for that; when your friends proudly show you how cool opera mini is without being asked; when at meetings half the people attending now have a 3G dongle attached to their notebook; then I think the mobile web and mobile Internet are really about that have a big breakthrough in the mass market. Well, all of these things have happened to me recently so we must be close. I call it the second wave because the first wave were the geeks, the minority, and they have used it for some time now. The second wave however, are the 'normal' people, the majority. Finally...

Comments

[Stefan Constantinescu]

No offense, but you're a book author.

Something tells me you have financial means that measure a bit past the average in the country you're living in.

The restaurants you hang out at, your colleagues, your friends, they're probably like you or similar to you and those sort of people finding out about the mobile internet was an inevitability if anything else.

2009 will be bloody, very bloody, I still don't think the masses will get the mobile internet in 2009.

But hey, that's just me. I hope you're right because the sooner the better. What happened today on the DOW however does little to inspire confidence.

[mobilesociety]

Hi Stefan,

Thanks for the comment. I can't yet imagine my mom using the mobile web and I can't imagine 7 year old kids using it yet (and both age groups use mobile phones) but everyone in between I have seen. Indeed you are right, the people I have observed above are of a certain age/income/interest group. However, none of those would have considered mobile Internet access just 18 months ago.

So maybe there is a 3rd and 4th wave coming? :-)

Cheers,
Martin

[Michael]

This post reminded me of two things:
1) Geoffrey Moore's book "Crossing the Chasm" and it's adoption curve seen here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Revised_technical_adoption_cycle.png
2) The long tail seen at http://www.longtail.com

Both talk about the long term residuals of any movement.

In the case of the adoption curve you can imagine one curve being superimposed upon another representing new variants of technology. I think you might be seeing that. As far as wireless I think we may be in the fourth wave.
1) wireless works
2) wireless ubiquity
3) wireless data
4) wireless location & interactivity

Great postings keep them coming.