Future of Web on Mobile Devices

When Segala was haggling with Lucas over the future of web on mobile devices, I was dazzled by the opportunities on offer. Segala represents the Web vision of Tim Berners Lee (who invented the World Wide Web, as we know it today).

In the developing countries like Pakistan, the Mobile mania is on fire. Everybody and I mean everybody has got one. But the stark reality is that very very very few know about their phone’s capabilities to bring the colors of web to them.

The argument that its far more cheaper to access web on mobile than to access it on wired network is bang on target. Everybody here has a cell phone, but only a select group has computers and paraphernalia and skills to have web. Telco’s here are racing with each other to lure people into calling and text-messaging. With the awareness of Web, they would be the ones to fuel up web passion in the populace here.

This trend would open up a new plethora of possibilities. Given the liberated nature of web, its ease of use, its cheap cost, its a sure-fire coming success in developing countries. Segala is right when he says that “People in developing countries don’t give a toss about the weather or travel information as suggested by just about every mobile ‘expert’ I speak with or listen to. The world is bigger than Slough. And not every train goes from Slough to London.”

Cheap tariffs, cheap web-enabled mobile devices and marketing from mobile companies can make this happen quite magnificently. This will also produce a whole new breed of developers for exactly this kind of media.

For me Segala, I would like to see better mobile devices (cheap of course), cheaper tariffs and best practices that help developers build mobile friendly websites.