Mobilizing the Web: Extending Human-Computer Interactions
‘Mobilizing the Web’ is a new blog series, here I will take a deeper drive at the topic of Mobile-Web Convergence. The goal is to help business owners determine how their organization can mobilize its on-line strategy and provide solution developers with enough knowledge to get started with the development for mobile context. The series will provide an overview of emerging mobile technologies, the industry opportunities, and IBM’s mobile application initiatives.
In today’s society, the Web has revolutionized how we consume, publish, and interact with information, but up to now it has only been accessible to people with desktop computers. But in our fast-paced always on the go society – businesses, organizations and individuals need to interact with others while being mobile. Today the Web and the mobile ecosystem are truly converging as these mobile devices are becoming more sophisticated and the web is extending to embrace the mobile platform.
Moreover, with four mobile phones purchased for every one personal computer, there’s a world of people for whom the mobile phone is the main access point to the Internet. The number of total subscribers is expected to reach half of the population of the planet by then end of this decade.
Take a look at this world map displaying countries with over 70% of population subscribed to mobile (darker orange shades indicate higher penetration of mobile devices).
US and Canada, with over 80% of mobile users, still don’t show the darkest shades of orange found on countries in Africa, South East Asia, or South America. In fact, most of these emerging countries have over 90% of population with mobile subscription. This is likely to be very significant in developing countries, where Web-capable mobile devices may play as similar a role in deploying wide-spread Web access as the mobile phone has played for providing “plain old telephone service”.
Truly, by leveraging on mobile devices, the Web can reach a much wider audience, and at all times in all situations. It has the opportunity to reach into places where wires cannot go, to places previously unthinkable (e.g. providing medical info to mountain rescue scenes) and to accompany everyone as easily as they carry the time on their wristwatches. To end this post, I will show another world map displaying Countries with IBM revenue growth greater than 10 percent in local currency in 2007.
Now compare this map to the previous and you will quickly realize why mobile is the next big channel for human-computer interaction for all markets.
Next Up: Introducing Mobile 2.0
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