Well, this sounds like a typical POV of the person who never used mobile internet device (iPhone, for example, performs best in this role).
Of course, screen is small, but there are a lot of UI specialists dealing with this and a bunch of developers ready to port their applications to mobile devices (have you seen Facebook client for iPhone?). I would not replace my IDE running on the PC with its mobile version, but geez, apart from that what else are you doing on your PC? Exploring Flickr? Updating Facebook status? Shopping on Amazon? Reading blogs? We could do all of that mobile, even now.
Mobile phone with internet access could potentially become a source of not less important revenue stream for anybody offering anything on the internet. Simple example: mobile operator (owning the identity and bank account info of the phone owner) could act as identity provider for online micropayments and charge them to the subscriber's mobile account. I could go to my friend's, see an interesting CD, scan its barcode with phone's camera, be redirected to Amazon immediately and pay without entering credit card details, using my mobile phone account -- all in couple of clicks, on one device.
I would not bet on mobile growth, I would bet on mobile shift. 4 times 2 minutes spent with surfing the web on iPhone on the go could be oh so much more rewarding (in terms of revenue attracted) for any internet service I am using, than 8 full hours in front of PC.
Of course, screen is small, but there are a lot of UI specialists dealing with this and a bunch of developers ready to port their applications to mobile devices (have you seen Facebook client for iPhone?). I would not replace my IDE running on the PC with its mobile version, but geez, apart from that what else are you doing on your PC? Exploring Flickr? Updating Facebook status? Shopping on Amazon? Reading blogs? We could do all of that mobile, even now.
Mobile phone with internet access could potentially become a source of not less important revenue stream for anybody offering anything on the internet. Simple example: mobile operator (owning the identity and bank account info of the phone owner) could act as identity provider for online micropayments and charge them to the subscriber's mobile account. I could go to my friend's, see an interesting CD, scan its barcode with phone's camera, be redirected to Amazon immediately and pay without entering credit card details, using my mobile phone account -- all in couple of clicks, on one device.
I would not bet on mobile growth, I would bet on mobile shift. 4 times 2 minutes spent with surfing the web on iPhone on the go could be oh so much more rewarding (in terms of revenue attracted) for any internet service I am using, than 8 full hours in front of PC.