The Year of Mobile Media Ahead?

Many are already proclaiming 2008 to be the year of mobile media. (Apparently 2007 was the Year of Social Media?). That means that more people will be using their cell phones and other mobile devices to access the Internet, view content, and make purchases, respond to ads, do banking, etc. "Here":http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/story/seven-biggest-mobile-content-stories-2007/2007-12-21s a good discussion 7 major mobile content headlines for 2007 that helped to push or delay the mobile trend. One of the most interesting bellweather points raised in this posting is that "in just five months since its commercial debut, the iPhone has secured a 0.1 percent share of the global browsing market, topping web browsing on all Windows Mobile devices combined. The iPhone is now the tenth most popular web browsing platform, a short distance behind desktop platforms Windows NT, Linux and Windows ME, as well as the most popular mobile browser overall." That's huge! If one (mobile) device can capture 1% of the market in five months - and that's before all of this open application for mobile phones picks up and a potential gobbling of a nice slice of the public wireless spectrum by Google - just imagine what's in store as these efforts roll out? Sure we still have a long way to go. It will likely be a while before most major carriers open up their proprietary phone and device features and before new business models to support them fully emerge. But the writing is on the wall...or on your iPhone interface. Another important and related trend is the continuing "decrease in handset ":http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News_by_Industry/Handset_majors_may_quit_entry-level_CDMA_market/articleshow/2612672.cms pricing globally. With more people being able to afford handsets, and in particular in developing countries like India that already more accustomed to mobile Web browsing, desktops and laptops will experience increasing competition from their smaller and more mobile cousins. So, if not the "Year of Mobile Media", I think at least we are going to see a big increase in mobile media activity next year. And if you believe all of the Google hype, including the latest "Google phone rumors":http://gigaom.com/2007/12/27/google-phone-in-spring-2008/, 2008 might even be the year that Google came to dominate the mobile web too?