Will 3G really bring the Web to users’ mobiles?

Posted by Jean Yves Chainon on November 26, 2007 at 3:04 PM

Now, with the much-advertised advent of the third generation of Internet-capable cell phones, dubbed 3G, content providers, advertisers and consumers are wondering whether this truly is the launch of a new era in mobile Web usage. And The Moscow Times has launched a mobile edition.

More than 30 companies have already signed up for the Open Handset Alliance from Google, in an attempt to promote open development of the Internet to the mobile market.

But in 2000, the supposed revolution of mobile Internet “turned out to be a flash in the pan,” reported Michael Fitzgerald, The New York Times.

Now with 3G, the numerous players who have bet on mobile Internet are waiting to see if the revolution will happen this time. US phone carriers seem to think the time is ripe. AT&T has allowed Apple “unusual control over the network in the iPhone, and Sprint and T-Mobile have signed on to the Android development platform of the Open Handset Alliance,” wrote Fitzgerald.

The Moscow Times, a Russian English-language newspaper, has launched its mobile edition, The Moscow Times Mobile. The paper uses Sendandsee Ltd’s patented Mobiprint Mobile Publishing platform. Users can read the latest updates once they have downloaded it, even retroactively without a network connection.

But a survey by the Yankee Group found that only 13% of cell phone users in North America use their mobile to surf the Web more than once a month. Compared to 70% of computer users who log in to the Internet daily.

Fitzgerald also argued that it’s still difficult to browse from a mobile, adding that “just finding a place to type in a Web address can be a challenge.”

Many firms are trying to tackle these challenges though. Among them, Zumobi, an offspring of Microsoft Research, is developing technology to make it easier for users to access sites from their mobiles.

The real difficulty is to pinpoint how users want to use the Internet from their cell phones. And to realize that mobile Internet should be under a different format altogether.

“People talk about the mobile Web, and it’s just assumed that it’ll be a replica of the desktop experience,” said Nathan Eagle, researcher at M.I.T. “But they’re fundamentally different devices.”

3G, or mobile Internet, will inevitably boom. Just when is the real question, and some remain skeptical.

“Widespread use of the mobile Web remains both far off and inevitable,” concluded Fitzgerald, rather unequivocally.

Source: New York Times - SWBusiness.fi through IFRA Executive News Service