Mobile phones vs. PCs to access the Internet - Crossover in 2007-08

As I catch up on back reading, I came on Tomi Ahonen's "Putting 2.7 billion in context: Mobile phone users".  It's a long but interesting article, worth printing out and reading in detail (something I can't do in the airport lounge) as it puts mobile phones in context:

...context. 800 million cars, 850 million personal computers, 1.3 B fixed landline phones, 1.4 billion credit cards, 1.5 billion TV sets. How many mobile phones in use today? In use today, yes, 2.7 billion (technically 2.7 billion in January, not December). They sold 950 million phones last year and the total worldwide mobile subscriber base grew from 2.1 billion to 2.7 billion. Three times as many mobile phones as automobiles or personal computers. About twice as many mobile phone owners as those of fixed landline phones or credit cards. And almost twice as many mobile phones in use as TV sets.

Yes, that 2.7 billion subscriptions includes duplicates.  There may be 2.4 to 2.5 billion discrete users, but the context is clear.  More importantly for the Web 2.0 crowd to think about:

During 2007 the first cross-over will happen, with more users accessing via phone than PC. Fascinating data coming on that usage as well, the Japanese regulator reports that those who access the web via mobile phone do so more frequently than those who access via a PC. Similar data now coming from several converged (broadband and mobile phone) web services like Flirtomatic in the UK. Its no wonder Google's new CEO Eric Schmidt, says the future of the internet is mobile.

So pay attention to Internet and mobile phone usage in Japan, Korea and China as there, mobile phones are already the dominate form of Internet access.

Comments

[ericsson phone sony w600i]

This is true today because mobile phones are keep on upgrading time and time again... but when it comes to accessing the internet, I am still fond the old ways… accessing it thru PC or a notebook, I am more at ease surfing the net in a large screen monitor. But when it comes to listening music or MP3 using a mobile phone, I can rely on ericsson phone sony w600i. One of the earliest generations of music phones.

[Dean Bubley]

Hi Brough

I have to say I am extremely skeptical about this analysis - it's something I've posted on myself in the past. I've seen absolutely no hard evidence that outside Japan, real mobile access to the "real Internet", not operator's WAP portals, is of any meaningful significance at all. Whenever I've drilled into supporting "data", it emerges that "Internet" often includes "anything using the browser". In particular, I can't believe that more than a tiny fraction of the world's 70% of prepay users are using the Internet.

There's often a woeful lack of definitions around what constitutes "a user" - someone whose done something once, once a year, once a day or so on. Similarly, there's a world of difference between "users" & "usage", the latter measured by time online / pages / byte or pixels consumed.

One good indicator is website logs' browser statistics - and all the data I've seen suggests the world's choice of client solidly remains based on PC versions of IE, Firefox, Safari etc.

Dean

[brough]

Dean, Thanks for the comment. I apologize for the delay in responding. Somehow I left my response in "draft" by mistake, so let me catch up now.

I sympathise with your skepticism and, you are correct, I can't justify Tomi's specific prediction that mobile users will overtake PC users in 2007 or 2008. Still I find Tomi's post very attractive because most of the rest of the US & EU seem to totally miss what is happening in China specifically and Asia in general.

I do see evidence beyond Japan, primarily in China. DoCoMo offers open access plus optional billing arrangements (at 9%) for 3rd party developers. China Mobile and China Unicom are now doing something very similar (except their cut to bill on behalf of 3rd parties is 15%). Data connection speeds are 2.5G at best and many of the 3rd parties are only offering voice value-added (VAS), but the market has been growing very rapidly for more than two years. Depending on who you talk to, there are now more than 10,000 or more than 13,000 mobile VAS providers in China. And, if I look at some of the Chinese Internet companies who have gone public on the HK stock exchange (and thus published annual reports in English), I see them investing in mobile VAS and reporting strong growth in mobile VAS.

Today, China's Internet access is still more PC-centric than Tomi allows, at least according to the China Internet Network Information Center:
http://www.totalcontentandmedia.com/View.aspx?ID=1079&t=2&en=1
who put total China Internet users at 137M with mobile Internet users at only 17M. But as far as I can tell, this mobile Internet base is growing very rapidly. If I had to guess, I'd expect the ratio to flip within two years after 3G services launch. Does that mean 2009? I'm not sure, but the trend is clear. (Yes, I'm talking users, not usage).

By the way, I don't think website logs' browser statistics is at all representative. If you are interested in browsing alone, you need to be looking at WAP sites, but email, IM and other services may be more important Internet applications for mobile phone users.

In general, I see a woeful lack of knowledge of what is happening in China. For example, while it's not mobile related, there has been a flurry of discussion in the press and blogsphere of Niklas Zennstrom's latest peer-to-peer TV project, the Venice Project, now Joost. In all this discussion, no one mentioned that peer-to-peer TV has been in routine use in China for two years now. See: http://blogs.nmss.com/communications/2006/12/peertopeer_tv_i.html including the comment by Gang Lu.

So perhaps I'm unduely sympathetic whenever I see anything from the EU or US that take into account trends in China or even in Asia. :-)