Mobile Devices

One of my part-time jobs is in web design. I am consistently telling my clients that they must adopt their websites to smaller screens. I know that in many households, bigger and bigger flat screen monitors are being used for television and computers. But the numbers are telling a much different story in terms of the future of internet browsing. Most people will be viewing screens that fit in their pockets.

Take India as just one example. In India alone, the mobile subscriber base has now reached 296 million users. That is almost the population of the entire USA. That number was just 192 million one year ago! India added 100 million mobile subscribers in the last year!

And let’s add Brazil to India. For a population of 192 million people, more than 120 million people (63%) have mobile devices and the 3G network is one of the most advanced for all of Latin America.

To put this in perspective, and to offer another mobile device example, Apple’s ipod has sold 160 million units since inception. I realize that people aren’t viewing the internet on their ipods, but they are becoming used to devices of that size that have tremendous user capabilities.

Most mobile subscribers internationally will browse the internet for the first time on a small screen instead of a laptop or desktop. Is your website prepared for this? As a musician, are you aware that really beautiful flash websites don’t even show up on the iPhone? Are you aware that your music player on MySpace does not function on the iPhone? How are you going to reach your fan base on their mobile devices?

Stay tuned,
Erik
erikrostad.com