According to a report published by global market intelligence firm, IDC, there are currently more than 450 million mobile Internet users in the world – a number set to reach 1 billion by 2013!

“Internet-connected mobile devices are reshaping the way we go about our personal and professional lives,” said IDC’s chief research officer, John Gantz. “With an explosion in applications for mobile devices underway, the next few years will witness another change in the way users interact with the Internet and further blur the lines between personal and professional.”

And given the current sales of smartphones, these predicted changes to mobile Internet habits are coming as no surprise.

Today, smartphones, all with Internet access as one of their major features, account for 14% of the total number of mobile phone sales.

The popularity of smartphone applications, a medium with vast potential in both the commercial and social sectors, is also reaching unprecedented levels. During the first 18 months of the existence of apps stores, users downloaded more than 2 billion apps!

And according to research published in Wired Magazine, smartphone applications will soon overtake normal desktop software applications, leading to a massive change in the way people communicate.

Social media is now at the forefront of those companies keeping up with the new trends in the way users access the Internet.

In order to increase these numbers significantly, Facebook recently revealed a new mobile website that will allow people in more than 45 countries to access their site quickly and without incurring browsing costs. That’s right…for free!

The new website, 0.facebook.com is exactly the same as Facebook’s current mobile website, with the exception that photos will not be viewable from the main page. Users wishing to access photos can do so but normal data charges will apply. Given that 65 million people already access Facebook from their mobile device, one can only imagine the extent to which these numbers will increase once the browsing charge has been removed!

While the focus of this new website is developing countries where data plans are uncommon (including Rwanda, Sudan and Bolivia), developed nations will soon benefit from this free access, with the website coming soon to Finland, Australia and France.

It now remains to be seen how many other companies and organizations will make the most of this trend in mobile browsing and whether the social sector will jump on board and use this trend to its advantage. The possibilities are unlimited!

Ashley Baldwin – Communications – www.marceloiniarra.com

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 30th, 2010 at 3:51 pm and is filed under Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.