But is it the right question? After all it is self-evident that the web is both simultaneously expanding and cooling today and has done so since the very beginning.
As each new improvement in the distribution technologies delivers more bandwidth and speed the web grows new start-ups emerge (Think: Agile Gas Balls) to displace the slower less sophisticated incumbents who have cooled down (in some cases Solidified) simply because they have devolved into old style media companies. We are seeing this happen to AOL, MSN and Yahoo!. By trying to adopt old media strategies to improve their share of the advertising market they become more inflexible and less agile. Even though they have enormous traffic they are looking increasing like yesterday’s media. Overtaken by Google, Facebook and other social media start-ups.
What makes the internet interesting is the waves that flow through it short history. Today we are on the 4th wave of the desktop internet. So far we have seen “just in time” dial-up, permanent dial-up, broadband and now fast broadband (Fibre Optics) . Each wave has washed through like a bell curve with those riding high on the previous curve being washed away by the next wave of start-ups.
What makes today so interesting is we are now seeing this pattern being disrupted by the Wireless technologies. It is the general confusion and turbulence that has been generated by this cross over convergence of the two wave patterns that is causing so much excitement in the market. After all wireless also has a history of waves with each new wave replacing the old incumbents.
In the beginning mobile communications was a relatively simple business to be in. Nokia and the rest of the industry was in the business of connecting people on the move. The industry thrived on signing customers up to fixed term plans and collecting voice revenues.
By the turn of the millennium this strategy had evolved into “publishing to people on the move”. Offering subscribers the chance to personalize their phones with music, games, wallpapers and ringtones. This strategy rapidly evolved as the telecoms industry analysts repositioned the mobile phone as the “4th Screen” and the “7th mass media channel” and the opportunity to build a new “globally personalized” mobile advertising platform became an exciting prospect for an industry always on the look out for new revenue streams.
That’s why today media, IT and telecoms management are desperately trying to discover the revolutionary strategy that will turn them into the “Google” of the mobile web. The market leader of potentially the biggest mass media market of them all.
With the advent of the smartphone (Think Blackberry and the iPhone) and the App Store the global micro media platform strategy evolved into the global micro multi media computer strategy. For the past 3 years the Telecoms industry has been in the business of “interacting with people on the move”. Focusing on increasing their ARPU by replacing falling voice revenues with data.
So where are we heading? Well today Silicon Valley is buzzing with ideas like Location Awareness and Social Networking via the mobile phone. Ideas that Japan has already been exploring for the past 5 years through mobile social networking providers like Mobagetown. Today the industry sees itself as being in the business of Aggregating their Customer’s Relationships. In many ways it’s a step back to the old idea of connecting with people on the move only this time we are replacing voice revenues with pictures, video, maps and text.
The real end game however (at least at this stage) is owning the mobile wallet. The idea that in the future the mobile phone will replace the customer’s wallet as the transaction purchasing platform of the future. To profit from this transition to “digital cash” – the plastic fantastic – the telcos will have to evolve into being in the business of Aggregating their customer’s relationships and brokering their increasing fragmented mobile lives.
As I have said a number of times before you don’t have to imagine the future of the Mobile Web. It is already here in Japan and South Korea.
The interesting things is much of what passes for telco industry strategic thinking today is in reality little more than a hotchpotch of these 5 key relationship strategies. Voice revenues continue to be the largest ARPU element of the relationship and so the original idea of simply “Connecting people on the move” remains central to the overall offering. Supplementing this proposition are the ideas of media, apps and social networking. None of these none core offerings have provided the breakthrough the industry was looking for but they have now become mainstream services within the industry.
The interesting thing about Japan is its eco-system is based on intelligent gadgets (Hardware) while – largely thanks to the iPhone – the US eco-system is based around intelligent Apps (software ).
The web of course is based on the idea of dumb networks (Think IP/TCP), dumb hardware (Think the PC) and dumb software (Think The Web Browser). The intelligence is mostly resident in the data (Think HTML, XML, Java, Javascript etc).
Getting back to Wired’s Is the Web Dead argument we discover one of the key ideas in the article is the Web (ie the dumb browser) is being replaced by the intelligent mobile App. But is it? Forget for one moment the response demonstrating the growth in total bandwidth usage posted by boing boing and consider this.
The history of the desktop internet (Think Windows PC, Laptops and Netbooks from 1995 to 2010) has been all about transition for Intelligent Apps (Think MS Office, Photoshop, Pagemaker etc) to Dumb Browser based services (Think Salesforce, Google Apps, eBay). Is it therefore logical to assume that the future of the Web is about going back to the future and embracing Intelligent Apps?
The answer to that is yes if you think the IT industry is a fashion based industry whose core product set does not evolve but oscillates in cycles (i.e. Smart Apps or Smart Hardware replaces or is replaced in turn by Dumb Terminals and Smart Services (Client Server)) thereby creating the illusion of (r)evolution for each new generation of developers and customers. After all, prior to the DOS, MAC, Windows desktop revolution most computing was delivered as a service. In this context the SaaS,PaaS revolution is a back to the future (r)evolution.
The alternative perspective is to take a time box view of the past and assign to it the assumption that the internet has changed everything. Under this scenario the Browser and Web Services has replaced Desktop applications because it is a more efficient and agile way to solve the customer’s problem. (i.e. It is easier to build applications within the browser than it is to build applications for the OS). Under this scenario the current boom in the App Store economy is basically what happened when Windows 3 was launched in the early 1990′s. It is therefore logical to assume the Apps will be eventually replaced or at least supplemented by the browser-based services as (Think IF) the mobile platform evolves in the same way the desktop platform has evolved in the past.
Yet another alternate view is to think of the web browser as a lowest common denominator OS (operating system) that sits across all OS’s thereby allowing all OS users to experience the same (very low) level of functionality and performance. Therefore a Mobile Browser that sits across all of the Mobile OS’s and devices will be a significantly larger and therefore potentially more lucrative platform for the developer than a proprietary OS platform (Think Blackberry or Apple)
Within each of these three scenarios mobile apps – rather being the death of the web – represent the stepping stone towards a future of mobile web-based services.
The only question will be are these mobile web services – or even these mobile apps – going to be free or will customers pay for them?
The key to success in this environment – as any experienced surfer will tell you – is to pick which wave you want to catch, get on it early, ride it to the best of your ability and then get out before the wave collapses and wipes you out.
If you have missed the social media or app store revolution don’t worry. Be patient. History shows us the next wave is just around the corner.
Further Reading
- Imagine all the people, living a Mobile Life
- Point, click and discover the future of advertising?
- Media Platform or Fashion Statement?
- More Eyeballs and More Revenues but is it the future of the mass media?
- Point, click and discover who your next friend will be
- Will we Point, Click, Search, Scan, Swipe See, Sign or Touch the Future?
- A leap into the unknown
- So just how do you make money out of serving up a free lunch?
- Why putting ads on the menu won’t pay for lunch
- Why the only market threatened by Mobile Advertising is the Internet
- How important is the Internet to the US economy?
- Do the Web’s Wal-Marts have a future?
- What’s on the MobCon Radar for the Web’s Wal-Marts?
- Is Social Media going to be a media tsunami?
Posted on August 19, 2010
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