A Phone is a Phone is a Phone....

Surveys by Yankee Group, a Boston research firm, show that only 13 percent of cellphone users in North America use their phones to surf the Web more than once a month, while 70 percent of computer users view Web sites every day.

In 2000, the wireless application protocol was supposed to bring the Internet to the cellphone. It turned out to be a flash in the pan, due to lack of high-speed cellular data networks. Now after a frenzied and costly effort to build third-generation, or 3G networks, 3G is called “a failure” by analysts – they say data would make up only 12 percent of average revenue per user in 2007, far below the expected 50 percent. (The 12 percent figure does not include text messaging, but you don’t need a 3G network to send a text message.)

I remember engaging in a blog debate over this. When the basic feature of call-drops are not being addressed by carriers, how can they get subscribers to pay for add on features like mobile web surfing (an annoying experience given the smallness of mobile screen size and truncated format) – I argued.

Today I saw this NYT report and feel vindicated…

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“People talk about the mobile Web, and it’s just assumed that it’ll be a replica of the desktop experience,” says Nathan Eagle, a researcher at MIT. “But they’re fundamentally different devices.” He thinks that the basic Web experience for most of the world’s three billion cellphones will never involve trying to thumb-type Web addresses or squint at e-mail messages. Instead, he says, it will be voice-driven. “People want to use their phone as a phone,” he says.

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