In case you haven’t read the news or ventured out of your house this year, guess what. The mobile web is here. And it’s coming on strong. Very strong!

If the 1950’s were about mainframe computing, the 60’s about mini computing, the 80’s about desktop computing, the 90’s about personal Internet computing, then we are now heading into an era of mobile Internet computing. In contrast to the mainframe or even the PC, the number of devices supporting mobile Internet computing is just staggering. The support includes cellphones, PDAs, smartphones, Kindle and other eBook readers, car electronics (GPS, etc.), games, wireless home appliances, and more.

Mobile Internet adoption is far outpacing its predecessors. According to Mary Meeker, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley, the iPhone and iTouch have reached an adoption rate 8X that of AOL after its launch. More than 2 billion iPhone apps have been downloaded to date. Expect the pace of app development and app usage to increase in the coming year.

In the industrialized world there are more mobile phone subscriptions than people. (Think about that!) At 1.6 billion subscriptions, there are 1.3 mobile phone subscriptions for every person in the industrialized world. And in the developing world? Believe it or not, there are already over 3 billion mobile phone subscriptions!

What more needs to be said? If you want to be ahead of the curve in 2010, get mobile. What does this mean for your small business website?

• Make absolutely sure that your website is viewable and usable on an iPhone.
• Make sure it works on other mobile devices as well.
• Explore mobile site options such as m.domainname.com or domainname.mobi. These should be streamlined, slimmed-down, large icon implementations of your website.
• Expect mobile Internet usage to increase. For certain populations like the US Hispanic population, expect more people to rely on their smartphone as their main computer. Start developing for the platform.
• If you have a product or service that could help people in emerging global markets, get mobile. Fast.
• And for testing purposes of your site, purchase a few different mobile devices. If that’s too expensive for your business, at the very least check your site on a number of your friends’ and colleagues’ devices.
• Explore the development of apps. There are already more than 85,000 apps for the iPhone. What unique, value-add app could your business provide to your prospective customers?

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Related posts:

1. Getting Mobile Website Design Right
2. Internet Stats – December 2009
3. Internet Stats – September 2009 Edition
4. 10 Website Trends for 2010
5. One Billion Internet Users!

Tags: mobile computing, mobile internet, mobile marketing, mobile web, mobile web site, mobile website

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 7:47 am and is filed under innovation, internet stats, mobile, small business websites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.