Mobile Web. We Haven’t Figure Out the Regular Web.

Posted on | June 2, 2008 | View Comments

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I’ve been perusing the feeds for the past week days watching news about the smart phone and mobile Web markets pile up.

It’s interesting to take a step back from the stream and just observe for awhile. I’ve been actively encouraging media companies to do just that — step away from the second-to-second chase of the Web. What I think I see coming — maybe by the end of this year — are the first major steps towards mobile computing platforms that begin to tap into some of the ideas that have been discussed for the past few years.

Let’s start with the macro: there’s a new name for the hardware devices that connect to the Web, mobile Internet devices (MIDs) that have attracted much attention thanks, I think, to Apple’s entry into the smart phone market.

However, Apple’s initial burst into the space has slowed with the Blackberry, after stumbling a bit, has increased its market share. But that’s hardly worrisome for Apple since its new 3G iPhone is rumored to be on the way.

But I digress. The mobile Web.

The MIDs will offer what the laptop and tablet PCs didn’t: an easy-to-transport computing system (you know, one that fits into your pocket and not your backpack). The battle between the Blackberry, iPhone and Treo (in that order, I suspect) and the mobile carriers desire to sell ever-cooler data packages and plans has reached a stagnation point. To continue growing the market, all of these companies need to find a way to deliver next-generation mobile applications to the smart phone.

Cue the hardware makers.

Intel has already announced a move into the processor development for this market and now NVidia has done the same. That’s big news because the processor war has started — and the memory war is already on — which means battery power is next. That’s the holy trinity of development: processor, power and memory.

When those three meet, the smart phones and other Internet-enabled, mobile computers will suddenly give people access to geo-located information, map-based information and database-driven, uh, data that we will come to quickly expect.

That doesn’t mean an instant shift, but one of the axioms I lived by when I was working online was that it took anywhere between 12-18 months to train an audience. That meant I refused to do the constant tweaking that so many sites do because I knew if we gave our audience time to grow comfortable with our site, we would ultimately serve them better.

I think that same number applies to adoption of new technologies. There are studies about this. I’m sure that’s where I got those number. I don’t believe I have stumbled upon the new Moore’s Law for adoption.

If those smart phones and high-speed mobile networks hit this year, sometime around 2010 smart technology companies will have already been experimenting with advertising on the mobile market (and, as I like to say, figuring out how to sell physical goods like eBay, which is where the real money is).

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