The Revolution of Content Fueled by the Birth of Mobile

The World Wide Web is one of the greatest accomplishments in human history. At its inception the Internet was simply a library of static web sites. These static pages were created and maintained by an elite few. Those corporations and government agencies that rarely engaged because it was an excepted practice.

Over the past decade there has been a fundamental and global change in who defines what information is on the Internet. Web 2.0 is nothing short of a revolution -- a climate shift in which an everyday consumer has the potential to become a producer of content. We no longer lay wait impatiently for the next morsel of information. The Web 2.0 tools available to us -- allow us to create, curate, distribute and comment. These tools are household names -- Twitter, Facebook, the Huffington Post and Mashable just to name a few. These platforms have given us an alternative to the mainstream channels.

Some would have you believe that the revolution is more like a street fight with the incumbents. That we are neither skilled nor vetted to produce quality content. This could not be further from the truth. I do not deny that there is much content in the way of ridiculous and nonsensical. Fortunately, there is also much content that is informative and awe-inspiring.

The consumption and production of content has become an infectious movement.

• 234 million - The number of websites as of (December 2009)
• 1.73 billion - Internet users worldwide (September 2009)
• 4 billion - Photos hosted by Flickr (October 2009)
• 1 billion -- The total number of videos YouTube serves in one day

These statistics are staggering so what is the catalyst that fuels this revolution -- it's mobile. The mobility landscape has been an ally to the content revolution. Devices such as smartphones, tablets, net books and the impending superphones have inspired generations of consumers.

Roughly, 519 million smartphones were sold in Q1 2010 and by 2014 3.6 exabytes of mobile data per month will be traveling over the Internet and carrier networks. It is pointless to ignore the numbers and companies from all verticals are rushing to monetize the mobile web -- from game publishers to magazine publishers to book publishers. Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley explains

...users are more willing to pay for content on mobile devices... for a number of reasons

1. Easy-to-Use/Secure Payment Systems


2. Small Price Tags


3. Walled Gardens Reduce Piracy


4. Established Store Fronts


5. Personalization

As smartphones and superphones continue to dominate the mobile landscape - I think that tablets will be the primary platform for the consumption and production of content. Ned May -- VP and Lead Analyst of Outsell explains:

Smartphones have fallen off the publisher's radar because of the success of the tablet. It's about the lean back or lean forward - this is what the consumer is looking for.

May continues to explain that publishers are moving more rapidly into the digital space but they are debating use case -- mobile app or HTML 5. Many of the publishers have limited resources and simply cannot support multiple apps on multiple platforms.

What Sports Illustrated is doing with HTML 5 is very good. It just works well on the tablet -- it will work well on any tablet. This is different from building an application that will be locked into a specific tablet platform -- in the case the iPad.

--Ned May, VP Outsell

The landscape is moving swift and true. By 2014 the mobile Internet will overtake the static Internet. There is simply no slowing down -- companies must adapt swiftly to succeed or be forced into extinction.

 

Follow Ramon Nuez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ramonbnuezjr

Comments

[MrVee]

05:30 PM on 07/28/2010

Great points all Ramon. However I don't agree the desktop will decline to the degree it will be overtaken by mobile carriers. As smart as smarts phones are, they are still limited in the kinds of content they can move. Moreover, inasmuch as I agree with you that mobile net traffic will increase, what I haven't seen or heard about are newer delivery/t­ransport services for all of this content.

There was sort of a gold rush when big telcos were forced to allow for competitio­n in the phone market but when comes to providers springing up to move all this content, it's crickets.

Some markets, such as the one here in Las Vegas got Clear Communicat­ions for wifi. But it truly isn't enough and doesn't offer these existing cell carriers anything in the way of competitio­n that reduces costs per megabyte to the degree that breaking up BellSouth did for the cell phone market. When will speculator­s invest in a technology that help to move all this internet traffic or does the Telecommun­ications Act signed into law by President Bill Clinton prevent this?

So did I leave the interstate­?

[Ramon Nuez]

09:58 PM on 07/28/2010

Thanks MrVee -- your comments are always appreciate­d.

So my understand­ing is that for Q1 2010 the worldwide PC market grew 24.2% from year on year. Now keep in mind that the PC market is still recovering from 2001. The recovery or resurgence that the PC market is seeing is in part do to emerging markets and niche desktops. With that said we will see 2 billion PC's by 2014. Now this is an impressive number but not so impressive when you realize that there are 5 billion handsets world as of 2010.

3.6 exabytes per month is a ridiculous amount of data. Which is in part why mobile network operators like AT&T have placed data caps on subscriber­s. As far as preparing these carrier networks -- they are all hard at work. T-Mobile is rolling out HSPA+, Spint is rolloing out WiMAX, Verizon and AT&T are rolling out LTE. These are all next generation networks and when coupled with true 4G handsets will experience theoretica­l 21Mbp/s download.

Also keep in mind that the FCC is moving to make available 500MHz of spectrum for wireless broadband. They are looking at Big LEO and the MNO's that are warehousin­g spectrum like Clearwire -- to give up some spectrum.

I apologize for all this detail but it's a complicate­d space and I wanted to try and answer completely your questions.