Phil Muncaster

You know, I regularly get stopped in the street by complete strangers. People often ask me, “Phil, what’s the future of the internet?”. They also sometimes ask me for directions, cigarettes, or if I have change for a can of Kestrel Super. But the one question I feel able to answer unequivocally and with a bit of authority is the first. Do you want to know what I tell them?

It’s all about the mobile phone. No, really. Global phone usage is over three billion according to estimates, which is about half the population of the planet – and it hasn’t reached saturation point yet. Figures from Forrester Research, meanwhile, put the number for global PC use at around one billion, so it doesn’t take a genius to realise that future generations are as likely to access the interweb through their phones as they are via a PC.

Not one to make smug predictions myself, or spoil the 3GSM party, I’ll just pinch those of Christian Lindholm, also known as “the father of the Nokia S60 user interface”, former director of Yahoo mobile and now director at design consultancy Fjord. Lindholm believes that 2008 will be the year the mobile internet becomes useful. It has been a sometimes frustrating wait for the content developers, handset manufacturers and mobile operators to make the first move in improving the mobile web experience, but it seems to be coming together. The historic barriers of price, latency and lack of compelling content are slowly tumbling down, the operators are offering low-cost, fixed-rate tariffs, and web sites are finally being designed to be accessed from a mobile.

Lindholm believes the iPhone and iPod Touch, combined with high volumes of 2in screens with good browsers, will energise the content industry to redesign sites. Aside from the iPhone, where browsing is possible without the need for massive alterations to the page, sites will need significant redesign to enable users to navigate swiftly on their handsets.

Another trend to keep a close eye on is GPS. If you can utilise this technology in your online business, it could be the most important thing you do on the mobile web.

Apart from the benefits GPS gives to the mobile worker or traveling salesperson, your customer-facing web site could be improved with the addition of any relevant location-based services. The benefits of combining search with location are enormous and if you can monetise that, the possibilities are pretty exciting.

It won’t be plain sailing for all, but that’s the word on the information super highway, and it makes sense to start planning now.

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