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What Do You Mean By Mobile Internet?

January 25, 2010
Filed Under: in Analysis, Bleeding Edge, Featured Articles, Mobile, Social Media
Author: Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins

Welcome back.

A blog post over at ReadWriteWeb and a study by UK-based Essential Research say that “only 76% don’t access the mobile Internet.” Mike Melanson at RWW calls this “combating the hype.”

The problem is not in the data – I believe that when you ask most people if they surf the web primarily on their handheld or their computer, they’ll say hands down every time that it’s their computer that they use.  The real question is two-fold: what do you mean by handheld, and what do you mean by “mobile Internet?”

According to Essential Research:

60% of UK mobile users claim to not even own a mobile with internet access and just 30% of these are interested in getting one. The picture gets worse for mobile operators with the revelation that even for upwardly mobile internet users and owners of smartphones, one third (31%) have never used their phone to connect to the internet, a quarter (24%) use it less than once a week and 8% tried it but don’t intend to do so again.

Reading the breakdown of the numbers, it’s clear that Essential Research doesn’t have a handle on what I’m driving at with these pointed questions (whereas you, loyal readers, know exactly what I’m talking about since you’ve heard my talk about disruption and convergence ad nauseum since the beginning of the year).

For those in the cheap seats and those at Essential Research, I’ll break it down again.

What is the Mobile Internet?

Is SMS considered the mobile Internet?  It should be.  SMS is, by and large, carrier agnostic, and is interchangeable with email on most mobile devices. What about GPS Maps functionality?  Many map devices and apps end up pulling data not just from a local storage device for all the updated geography, but from the Internet via a public API.

imageHow about mobile social networks with their own third party apps (commonly used for Twitter and Facebook access)?  Do users consider that the Internet?  Does Essential Research? For that matter, what about the original social network – email? How about push-to-talk features? Typically push-to-talk on networks that aren’t Nextel are voice data files encoded over the SMS network.

How about 4G network users, where voice packets get encoded into data?

You see where I’m going with all this? On the monetizable side, and on the non-monetizable side, Internet usage is pervasive on most mobile devices we consider traditionally to be phones (smart or not).

What is a Mobile Device?

imageI’ve brought this up a few times, but I’m going to keep drumming it up until I’m laughed at roundly or it catches on: the life-cycle for the smartphone is almost at an end. We’re starting to see the rise of the 4G and other types of WiMax networks, finally. The prices for usage on these networks are quite attractive compared to typical mobile connectivity providers, and are device agnostic.

It makes the options for mobile voice connectivity almost endless.  We could see a return to the days when ultra-cheap Palm style devices were commonplace, or you might just see people taking advantage of just-as-cheaply-priced netbooks running $40 FemtoJacks or just plain Skype connections. Why pay $120 a month for a six inch screen and crippled connection when you can have a mini-laptop, voice and broadband data for $25 a month?

That’s the future. What about now? We see a whole host of devices meant to exclusively access the mobile Internet in a transparent manner (like Kindles, Peeks, GPS devices, FloTVs). Granted, many of the devices in this genre aren’t available in the UK (where this survey took place), but I can’t expect that Britain is a gadget wasteland.

My point is that the lines are blurring as to where traditional connectivity and interconnected communication begin and end. To say that there’s only 24% of the population that utilizes the mobile Internet is disingenuous at best and ignorant at worst.

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7 responses to “What Do You Mean By Mobile Internet?”

  1. Simon Kendrick says:
    January 25, 2010 at 6:31 pm

    Hi Mark

    Thanks for taking the time to write your thoughts on our recent. You raise some great points, and indeed point out some gaps in our press release.

    Firstly, it is worth pointing out that our research was limited to mobile phones and not devices such as iPod Touches

    Secondly, what is the mobile internet? Whatever people take it to be, in our opinion. Our research is from the consumer perspective. Our experience is that the average person (at least in Britain) doesn't really care how a service is delivered to them (whether SMS, WAP, GPRS, application or otherwise), so long as it does what they want it to.

    Thirdly, and inevitably, some of the nuance of research gets lost from data to press release to report to comment. The key word (which to be fair is missing from the opening paragraph of our press release) is "claim". Is the true number of Brits ever accessing the internet higher than 24%? Probably, but not by much. Once we move beyond a certain demographic and lifestyle, the mobile internet is pretty niche behaviour.

    What we were struck by among the general, non tech-savvy population is the lack of understanding and comprehension of mobile internet services. In addition to asking people whether or not they had an internet enabled phone (after weighting the data to a nationally representative population and to correct for attitudinal and behavioural imbalances caused by adminstering the survey online, this figure was 60% ie 40% claimed to), we also asked our respondents what their handset was. Not everyone could answer, so our dataset is incomplete but of those that did answer, close to 9 in 10 would appear to have at least a GPRS enabled phone. If we assume everyone not answering does not have an internet enabled phone, the figure drops to about two thirds.

    There are several reasons for this imbalance
    - People not regarding a "walled garden" experience as the internet
    - The phone being a hand me down, where the user has little knowledge of the functionality
    - The phone being purchased for reasons other than the mobile internet (such as the general aesthetics), and this functionality being ignored
    - The user not regarding some functionality (e.g maps, or email) as being internet-based

    One of the major findings from a research is that we feel mobile internet adoption (use, not just ownership of an enabled device) can accelerate if communications move towards emphasising the unique benefits of the mobile device over a computer - such as its proximity and mobility. When people beging to consider location-based services such as directions or vouchering, their interest is raised. We found that over half of (claimed) non mobile internet users were surprised at some of the services available by the mobile internet, and that seven in ten were interested in getting at least one (from a list of potential services shown to them).

    I hope this helps clarify a few things. We're big believers in the benefits of the mobile internet and believe it will take off in a big way before long. But we also believe it is important to not get too far ahead of ourselves, and bear in mind those that are perhaps less experienced in understanding and handling such technology

    Best wishes,
    Simon Kendrick, Essential Research

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    January 26, 2010 at 1:19 am

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