Yesterday evening UK time Steve Jobs unveiled the new iPhone and the much-promised mobile internet was born.
There have been many attempts at internet on the move in recent years but something has always held it back. No single device has covered all the bases. The new iPhone knocks those previous attempts to the floor and batters them to a pulp.
My much loved Nokia N95 has 3G and a competent built in browser but the screen is too tiny for surfing, there’s no QWERTY keyboard and until recently Vodafone’s data pricing made the mobile internet an expensive and unpredictable proposition. The built in wifi is good but you need to install a third party app such as Devicescape to make hopping onto wifi hotspots a breeze.
The new iPhone brings the Apple handset into the 21st century with 3G for high speed mobile internet access and has the customary huge screen, excellent Safari browser and multi touch interface. But what’s really going to kickstart the mobile web on the iPhone is the pricing.
At last the iPhone is available on the sort of price deals that UK and European mobile users expect. An 18 month £35 contract gets you 600 minutes and the handset is just £99. You can even get the 8GB model for free if you’re prepared to pay £45 a month. All tariffs include unlimited 3G browsing and unlimited wifi browsing via The Cloud and BT Openzone.
Pay as you go pricing is apparently “coming soon”. That opens the iPhone up to the mass market who don’t want or can’t get a contract.
The techy crowd are still bemoaning the low spec 2 megapixel camera that doesn’t include a flash and certainly that’s the feature that is a bit of a downer for me, but the mass market mobile phone users really don’t care that much about the camera. People don’t really expect their phones to take fantastic shots they just want to be able to take a few snaps when they’re out down the pub.
Of more interest to the techies though is the App Store. Apple have opened up development of iPhone applications and provided a one stop shop for selling your wares. This could be huge. What sells Windows isn’t the operating system it’s the applications you can run on it. No phone so far has had a wealth of applications that can easily be installed by the average Joe User. The iPhone may just be the first one that does.
So for us affiliates now is the time to start building the mobile web. I think we’re going to see a huge land grab over the next 6-12 months. It may not be immediately profitable but it’s going to be like Web 2.0 all over again : get users, build loyalty, monetise when you can. This is the mobile web 2.0 and it’s going to be massive.