Russell Beattie posted on the new "mobile boom" he sees coming (Thanks Oliver!). Unfortunately I do not believe him. Sure the numbers look nice (although you cannot read growth rates from them!) and the author points out that most if not all of this will be Java-enabled, buzz-compliant phones too! And 3G is being rolled out! Russel takes this to mean that we will soon all have high speed wireless connectivity all the time and that this spell some kind of new (economic) boom.
I disagree and strongly so.
Firstly, although 3G might soon be available in most places this doesn't mean people will use it.
The killer app for these high-speed links has yet to be found. Plus success will only come if people want this kind of connectivity all the time. Fact is, they don't. I can talk while I'm walking or driving (provided I have a car-kit) but I can't surf the internet while doing these things. And even if I'm sitting down somewhere I still don't need this kind of connectivity 99.99% of the time. Clay Shirky is saying something similar by the way. Sure, the geek in me would love to sit out in the sunshine browsing the web wirelessly. The realist in me however knows that, besides the fact that the LCD screen of my mobilephone or laptop would be unreable, this will hardly ever happen. What would you want to accomplish by doing something like that? If I was out in the sunshine I'd order a beer, not fire up a web-browser or some other connected application. And before you say it: I don't need a high-speed datalink to find a decent place to order that beer either.
Although I have a Nokia 6600 which has all the options I would need I still rarely ever need them. Sure I sometimes check my email on it but browsing is still a sad affair, due to the form-factor of the device. No high-speed link will change this. In fact I can only remember one instance where being connected would have been useful, namely when one of my friends found out in the car he had forgotten his bag at a diner somewhere. By the time someone had gotten the browser open on his phone, someone else was already on the phone to the number-service of his carrier and even by asking for "this diner somewhere in this and this area" he got a direct response of "Did you mean blablabla-diner?" and was connected straight away. The "old-fashioned way" was simply faster.
And how about specialised applications besides browsing? Sure there will be some, but will they spell a new revolution? Probably not. The mobile industry is full of clever people, has been since the beginning. If a real killer-app existed it would have been here by now, 3G or not. Real-time video editing for instance has only recently become possible. Did that stop people from editing video digitally years and years ago (VideoToaster anyone?), both professionally and for fun? No. So the non-availability of 3G isn't likely to have stopped a killer-app either.
And this is a geek talking! My sister in law happens to have the same phone. She didn't even know she could check her email with it. Or change the theme, or download Java-enabled, network-connected games or do instant messaging, or connect it to her PC to do "stuff". Now that she does know this is possible (I told her) will she? Not likely. Oliver wrote about this yonks ago. Things have gotten worse since then, not better.
Lastly, there is the cost issue. This is not just about 3G being insanely expensive at the moment. The cost will drop. But will it do so before the hype is over? Probably not, as the investments the carriers made were too high. The cost-model itself (metered vs. flat-fee) is problematic too.
And although the carriers are shouting that 3G will vastly improve their ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) this isn't likely either, since the amount of money people have is still finite. Many young people today are already getting into financial troubles over their phonebills. It is however these same young people that are widely expected to drive this "revolution".
Do I believe there is no value in 3G at all? Of course I don't. But like any new feature on any product or solution it won't save the world or cause a boom. There will be lots of hype, loads of money lost and many companies filing for bankruptcy before this hype is over (Same for WiFi). After that it will just be another tool in the toolbox, like bluetooth, IR, GPRS, MMS, camera, etc. It will be there when you need it, but it won't carry the market by itself. Its primary use is likely to be a means to send larger photos taken by the phone's camera across faster, but only if the cost is the same or less then the MMS/GPRS combo we have today.
And lets not forget that same as the killer app of the internet is email, the killer app of mobile communications in whatever form is still communication. People talking. Voice. Whether this talking happens via a specialised protocol like GSM or as generalised IP packets on a mobile network won't make any difference to user and therefore to the market.
