The Internet as we knew it about a decade ago has change at a phenomenal pace and the advent of mobile internet and the social networking revolution will in the near future, take the web to standards, that weren’t dreamt of just five years ago. As per the predictions from Mary Seeker of Morgan Stanley, these two online platforms will subject the world of hardware, commercial web and user interaction to a new dimension, that will radically change the face of the Internet forever.
The current technological cycle is said to be the fifth in the last 50 years. The first technological revolution took place with the advent of the mainframe era in the 1950s and 60s, closely followed by the mini computers in the 1970s and the one before the present cycle was the invention of desktop Internet in the 1980. As the current market for mobile devices and smart phones explodes with cutting edge technologies, it has been envisioned that, in the next five years, the conventional fixed Internet could very well be replaced by mobile Internet, as more and more users turn towards their mobile device for their online activities. The credit was this incredible growth of the mobile Internet is being given to the 3G technology, that has provided the users with high speed Internet services on their mobile devices and the introduction smart devices including Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. The spread of the 3G network has been incredibly impressive especially in Japan, where it reached to nearly 96% of the population.
However, Ms. Seeker has stated that, this revolution in terms of mobile Internet, will surely become one big burden on the network carriers as the 3G and 4G services would be primarily based on data streaming. As per calculations, the average usage of a conventional cell phone is attributed to 70% for voice calls, but in the case of the iPhone only 45% of the phones feature are used for voice calling and the rest are used entirely for online activities. Furthermore, if this continuous rise in the data demand on mobile device maintains the present pace, then the mobile data traffic is expected to increase 4000% by the year 2014.
Via GigiaOm
