Social Integration and The Mobile Web
One of the technologies that has developed conspicuously alongside the communications network — the Internet — are mobile devices that can access the Internet at any given time and at any given moment.
In certain ways, the explosive revolution of the Internet in terms of its initial developments in infrastructure translate to its relevance in the economy.
Further, the Internet has experienced recent shifts towards a more semantic role in information transmission that is coincident with mobile platforms available on the market — improving its overall accessibility and constancy over time.
In other words, as the Internet grows, so does the demand for devices such as smartphones which can access the information and resources the Internet has to offer, as well as conveniences in the form of third-party apps, or applications
To a certain extent, the development of mobile platforms and the Internet fuel each other in a feedback loop.
For instance, the development of a smartphone with a large screen that can display apps introduces and creates a new segment of the market of users who use this service, and the optimization of that service to these users is incentivized heavily by how the market responds to and rewards technological innovation.
The impact of the mobile nature of the Internet has already manifested itself in the present through popular service apps on a variety of smartphones such as Uber, Lyft, Postmates, Grubhub, and a multitude of other apps pairing supply to demand in a large scale.
The growth and size of these companies attests to the impact that the emphasis on the mobile sector of the Internet exerts on the direction of the Internet’s future role as a whole.
The ever-increasing development and competition of new platforms and innovative methods take advantage of the communications infrastructure offered by the Internet and create an incentivized structure that is headed towards a greater integration between our physical lives and the virtual sphere of influence exerted by the Internet on it.
The recent history of economic interactions and subsequent technological developments between mobile devices and the Internet.
In the beginning, the idea of a mobile communications system was not popular mostly due to the fact that technologies in other fields made the idea impractical: the shortness of battery life, limits in processing power, low bandwidth, unpredictable availability and stability of service, and so forth all constitute significant barriers that mobile platforms hosting and benefitting from the Internet needed to surmount in order to become successful (Shujaa, 2010, Slide 4).
Besides the barriers of hardware incompatibility, the Internet itself and its protocols were not designed for mobile use and consumption in the past. (Shujaa, 2010, Slide 5–6). Of course, the situation changed with a number of technological breakthroughs on both the hardware side in terms of the advancement in capability and aesthetic of mobile phones and on the side of new protocols adopted suited to mobile use of the Internet.
As an example, Apple became a leader in the field of this mobile market involving the Internet because it developed a phone ostensibly specialized for that purpose with its release of the iPhone.
Though the Shujaa Solutions presentation is authored in 2010, the authors still recognize that while the “feature phone” category currently dominated the market, “the borderline between feature phones and smart phones is constantly shifting towards the smart phone category” (Slide 16).
Even in 2010, comparing the Smartphone Market Share graph detailed in Jon Raasch’s article on the development of mobile networks, we see that Apple’s iPhone occupies a whopping 28% of the market share: more than the entire market share of smartphones in the Shujaa graph. A full seven years later, it is now an unremarkable fact that iPhones, Androids, and Samsungs dominate the market, with traces of the once popular and stylish flip-phones becoming a relic of the past.
Meanwhile, a dramatic change in the infrastructure of the Internet itself was made in order to capitalize on this newfound mobile user market by creating protocols to optimize that experience. One of the progenitors of this sort of optimization is WAP, or Wireless Application Protocol, founded in 1997 by a number of mobile phone companies such as Motorola or Nokia and focusing on overcoming communications service related issues such by (1) minimizing bandwidth requirements, and (2) maximizing the number of supported networks (Shujaa, 2010, Slide 22–24).
With the gradual dissolution of the previously difficult barriers such as low battery life being solved by mobile devices that are continuously improved and optimized by competing companies, and with adaptations arising in the form protocols such as WAP — protocols which made mobile information sharing more feasible — the popularity and practicality of the Internet in transmitting information and becoming an economic force by connecting supply and demand skyrocketed.
Raasch’s (2010) insights into the nature and tendencies of the smartphone market and the development of apps are prophetic in consideration of his idea that:
“Mobile development is more than cross-browser, it should be cross platform”.
Indeed, large corporations nowadays definitely operate along the “cross-platform” philosophy: Facebook is available as an app for either iPhones or Androids, as is any popular app including games like 2048 or money transferring services like Venmo, Square Cash, and even mobile banking services.
Moreover, with the hardware and protocol barriers to mobile Internet and services removed by recent technological advents, a booming economic ecosystem that appears self-contained to a mobile app or networking realm has emerged. In a report on “the mobile internet” made in its nascent phases, consultants at Morgan Stanley (2009) have found that:
“Five IP based-products/services are growing… and providing the underpinnings of dramatic growth in mobile Internet usage — 3G adoption + social networking + video + VoIP + impressive mobile devices”.
This is of course a historical perspective, but it shows very clearly that the removal of these barriers of course appears to be coincident with a continuously increasing economic integration of those mobile platforms and services into our lives.
A video entitled “Future of Mobile Internet” claims that mobile usability has changed, and cites a number of interesting statistics like “50% of all local searches are performed on mobile devices” or “Yelp has 41 unique visitors a day with 10% of those users being mobile” to highlight this increasing presence of the mobile web in our everyday lives (CrowdSauce 2011).
Furthermore, a number of reputable corporations and analytical or consulting companies have also offered similar opinions.
Dominic Basulto (2012) of bigthink.com comments on the economic structure and incentivization inherent in the further development of a mobile platform, writing that:
“Facebook’s recent $1 billion acquisition of Instagram is just the latest sign that the social networking paradigm… is nearly over… For now, mobile is that new paradigm… The need to adapt to a mobile world will only intensify as new devices are created that connect directly to the Internet”.
Basulto’s comments resonate with our idea that the increasing feasibility of a mobile Internet is only fueling a more rapid onset of that mobility.
Beyond the existing technologies and solutions that we have identified as part of the history of how a demand or need for a mobile Internet had been catalyzed by the emergence of mobile devices that made such services feasible, Cisco has claimed that greater integration and technological advents are on the horizon.
Again, the same problems are simply being solved with greater solutions, and the incentivization of these solutions drives a society that utilizes the mobile web towards integration with that web. In their report regarding the solutions that Cisco as a company themselves offer, Cisco elaborates on these possibilities citing an interest to:
“Boost agility to capture new revenue opportunities, improve operations and provide a better customer experience, prepare for 5G, IoT, and [expand further] beyond with a unified enablement platform…” (Cisco 2010).
It is clear that these newer solutions appear to be driving our society towards greater integration with the Internet with each new convenience that helps connect us with that network.
For the past, present, and seeming future, mobile platforms and apps are helping galvanize the integration of the general population into a continuously active and robust Internet, driven at the root by economic forces and competition between companies to optimize those services for the user.
References
Shujaa Solution. (2010, December 10). Introduction to mobile Internet. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/shujaasolutions/introduction-to-mobile-internet
Raasch, J. (2010, November 3). How to build a mobile website. Smashing Magazine. Retrieved from http://mobile.smashingmagazine.com/2010/11/03/how-to-build-a-mobile-website/
Cisco. (2010). Evolution of the mobile network. Retrieved from http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns973/white_paper_c11- 624446.html
CrowdSauce. (2011, April 30). Future of Mobile Internet. [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvSdSyr4egI
Basulto, D. (2012, April 19). Mobile is so Money: The future of the Internet. Retrieved from http://bigthink.com/endless-innovation/mobile-is-so-money-the-future-of-the-internet
Morgan Stanley. (2009, December 1). The mobile Internet report. Retrieved from http://mobile.knet.ca/node/34
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