Month: December 2007

links for 2007-12-21

Mobile Updates Part II – The iPhone Edition

It’s been only three weeks since I got my iPhone. There are many things that I wish it did better, but despite those items, I couldn’t be happier.

The iPhone is a mobile device in the truest sense of the word. It is a joy to use. The iPhone truly lets you see what is possible with an Internet connection that is available to you 24/7 no matter where you are.

I follow the news about the iPhone not simply because I own one, but also because I believe the usage patterns of the iPhone are much more typical of what we are going to see in the future of the mobile web than if we look at the past usage of mobile devices. Trying to draw conclusions about the future of mobile devices by looking at statistics before the iPhone is like trying to draw conclusions about the future of web browsers by looking at the usage of gopher after Mosiac had been released.

Here are some recent updates on the iPhone that are of interest:

  • iPhone browsing marketshare closes in on .1% — This doesn’t seem like a lot, but it is amazing for only being available for five months. In addition, Windows Mobile which has several times the number of devices in the world, but only represents 66% of the browser share of the iPhone. This is the difference between the web done well on a mobile device (iPhone) and done poorly (Windows Mobile). Too often people draw conclusions from the poor implementations that people don’t really use the Internet on their mobile devices. In truth, people don’t use them because they don’t measure up.
  • iPhone Q3 US sales top all Windows Mobile smartphones — More iPhones were sold in Q3 than any other smart phone than the blackberry.
  • iPhone Tops Google’s List of Fastest Growing Search Terms in 2007 — This shows the interest in the iPhone is wide spread. It truly has mass market appeal. People have taken notice.

links for 2007-12-17

3.3 billion mobile devices = half the planet

(Cross-posted at http://www.cloudfour.com/21/33-billion-mobile-devices-half-the-planet/)

I wrote recently about how the number of mobile devices dwarfs all other media and how this staggering this statistic is. A recent study puts the number of mobile devices at 3.3 billion, up from the previous number of 2.7 billion. That is one mobile device for half of the world’s population.

Tomi T Ahonen provides some context on these new numbers:

  • Growth is accelerating, not slowing down as many predicted
  • 3.3 billion is the number of devices, not the number of people. Many people have more than one phone. Italy has a 140% subscriber rate. The number of people using mobile devices is 2.55 billion which means there is still room to grow.

Much like Tomi’s previous article, the real perspective comes from his comparison of the number of mobile devices (3.3 billion) to things we take for granted. For example. there are only 1.5 billion people in the world who have credit cards.

Mobile Updates Part I

Some significant mobile updates over the past few weeks:

Site Speed News

I’m catching up on a backlog of RSS feeds. I’ve got a few posts highlighting news that I missed. Hopefully it won’t be too out of date to be relevant.

Let’s start with two bits of news to pass along regarding site performance:

  • Study: Web Will Slow by 2010 — The increase in video usage is likely to saturate home internet provider networks. The study believes that speeds will decrease to dial-up levels. If this comes to pass, which I still consider a stretch, it will be more important to build fast sites.
  • YSlow-er — Yahoo released a new version of their YSlow plugin. Some of the changes may cause the grades for sites to drop. Details in the article. Update your firefox plugin to take advantage of the new features.

links for 2007-12-16