Carlo Longino of MobHappy writes The Tipping Point For The Mobile Web where he expands on an entry from Russell Beattie of Mowser titled Crossing the Rubicon of the Mobile Web where they write about the mobile web reaching the point of no return, or the tipping point.
But while we are in the right path, we haven’t reached yet a tipping point. Tipping points are a result of critical mass, but critical mass hasn’t been achieved yet, in my humble opinion.
Russell writes:
“Ever notice that no one says stuff like, “No one will want to use the web on their mobile phone,” any more? I have, and I can tell you it’s very refreshing!”
I am not a naysayer, but just being realistic. I have my business folks at eZee hitting hundreds of folks out there right now, and I can tell. Yes, things have improved though, just no tipping point yet.
We will be ready for a true tipping point when most users have web plans enabled on their phones, which is not the case today. If you are not an iPhone user you must take explicit steps to web-enable your phone (by default either no data plan is active, or is active by usage, which is not good enough); flat or cheap rates for web plans that are automatically enabled when subscribing. Right now I would say that no more than 15% of subscribers have web plans enabled on their phones. Yes most if not all advanced mobile users do have web/data plans.
That said, at eZee we believe in rich user experiences, and the lack of tipping point hasn’t stopped us from selling and deploying richer experiences based on mobile web, in addition to basic experiences based on mobile text messaging. Other rich content methods are also in the pipeline.
ceo