With the start of the New Year, the industry is full of predictions about what developments 2008 will bring. The telecoms industry faces an exciting year ahead as the mobile web finally comes together with the tools and incentives to spur adoption – just like the PC-based web did a decade ago. In the same way that we moved on from sitting in a group around the radio, it will soon be considered antiquarian to have to sit at a desk to use the internet.

Previously, issues such as small handset screens, slow connection and expensive tariffs put off users. Over the past year, the industry has overcome these issues with flat-rate tariffs, fast HSDPA / HSUPA connections, ubiquitous and low-cost developer tools (like those found at dotMobi’s http://dev.mobi) and phones designed specifically with the mobile internet in mind.  

There is also more engaging content than ever before. 2007 saw hundreds of “first ever” mobile sites for travel (sas.mobi), hotels (hilton.mobi), banking (barclays.mobi), dining (zagat.mobi) entertainment (smirnoff.mobi), estate agents (locationlocation.mobi) and voters outreach (votescotland.mobi). 

This year, mobile internet sites will be even more dynamic and interactive. Mobile sites where we can upload images, post comment, and interact in real time will encourage adoption, particularly among young people. We already saw a surge of these towards the latter end of 2007 with moblogs (cityclickers.mobi), social networking (winksite.mobi), mobile video (blueapple.mobi) and Skype (3skype.mobi).  

We’ll also see transactional sites increase with m-commerce and mobile advertising, which will encourage companies to develop mobile sites as people become more aware of the importance of a mobile presence. 

Paul Nerger, vice president of advanced services and applications, dotMobi