Contributed by Chad Morgan
In 2008, the International Telecommunications Union, the ITU, reported that there were 577 million mobile Internet users, worldwide, at that time. The ITU went on to predict that by 2013 there would be 1.7 billion mobile Internet users. As 2012 draws to a close, it is interesting to see where that prediction from four years ago has gone.
In June of 2012, the ITU estimate was that there were 1.1 billion users, or a full 16% of the world’s population. With an annual growth rate of 45% in mobile broadband subscriptions for the last four years, the number of users will continue to expand, along with the marketing opportunities that kind of growth will present. The semiconductor manufacturer AMD predicts that in 2015, half the world’s population will have an Internet connection. The majority of those connections will be with mobile technology.
In 2012, the majority of interactions with the Internet occurred on mobile devices, mostly smartphones, according to Accenture. The most popular use of mobile technology is to send and receive emails, to connect with on-line communities, and instant messaging. In other words, while fixed Internet (using personal computers) has chiefly been to share information, mobile ‘net is primarily concerned with interpersonal communication.
Accenture reports that the growth of mobile is directly attributable to improvements in network quality and coverage. “Consumers are now more willing than ever to pay for premium services.”
Interestingly, the greatest penetration of mobile use is in the so-called developing world, Asia and Africa. These are also the parts of the world which are seeing the lowest growth in Personal computers. Most users in the developed world have access to fixed Internet connections, whereas users in the developing world see mobile as their primary Internet experience. This poses interesting questions when considering the Internet as an educational tool, especially when considering the limitations inherent to hand sets for typing and text based interaction.
Another wild-card for web developers is in the world of browsers. In fixed Internet usage, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox dominate the market. Other browsers account for less than 10% of usage. Largely because of different handset manufacturers preloading proprietary software, there are no less than nine major players in the mobile browser market.
This means that web-development needs to be optimized not only to maximize user experience on the smaller handset or tablet screen, but that development needs to tailored to the programing and code idiosyncrasies of of each browser.
The concept of combining computing with mobile telephony has been with us since 1973 (although some would argue it goes back to the original Star Trek television series). The first mobile phone to incorporate PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) features hit the market was the IBM Simon in 1994. The Palm Kyocera 6035 supported limited Web-browsing in 2001. In 2002 the Blackberry became the first true Smartphone, and the symbol of the rising executive.
Smartphones for the masses became a reality in June 2007 when the first generation iPhone was introduced. The Android Operating system predates iOS, but the open-source nature of the project and non-standard handsets hampered early development. Improvements in both handsets and the operating systems have brought Android and iPhones closer to parity.
The smartphone market essentially did not exist six years ago, and we are now on the verge of one half of the people on the planet having an Internet connection.