Rajesh Jain has posted a series of articles on Mobiles being your next PC. I would strongly encourage you to head over to the links below:
1) The Emerging Internet: From PCs to Mobiles
2) The Emerging Internet: From Reference Web to Live Web
3) The Emerging Internet: From Search to Subscription
4) The Emerging Internet: From Advertising to Invertising
5) The Emerging Internet: The Next Google
To quote from his last post :
Let us summarise the key points so far. My contention is that the next Internet – what I call the Emerging Internet — will be built around mobiles, rather than PCs. It will be a window to the Live Web, rather than the Reference Web. Subscriptions, rather than Search, will be the way we will interface with the Live Web. Invertising, and not Advertising will be dominant business model in the Emerging Internet. And to take it one step further, the company that will dominate this new Internet will not be Google or one of the existing players…. I believe that emerging markets like India offer a great opportunity for giving rise to the new leader because they are where this new world built around mobiles, the Live Web, subscriptions and invertising will first emerge. Because shifts are going to happen on multiple dimensions, it will be hard for the existing leaders to match. Exciting times lie ahead – as they have always! Innovation and entrepreneurship-led change is the only constant.
I believe that Rajesh Jain is “partially correct”. The tiny mobile screens are a dampener and the market dynamics have not yet matured to be able to support the services that are being talked off. 3G would be a non starter, in my opinion. Unless, they have something really as exciting as a dirt cheap handset or vendor supported handsets with lock in periods. This, I believe, would spur on some usage.
Indians are not exactly as wired as their western counterparts are. Primarily because of lack of access and beyond stupid game shows, these SMS based services have not been good enough money spinners; even though they account for an estimated 10-12% of the operating margin. Still, as Rajesh points out, the future is “bright”. We do have an oppurtunity to be able to taken the lead and develop some applications which can be replicated on a large scale (and perhaps get a mention on this blog)!