New data tells us that the US is catching up fast when it comes to web browsing through mobile phones. According to
Bango data,
'the top five countries accessing the mobile web via Bango in July 2008
are the UK at 19.35%, the US at 18.88%, India at 10.82%, South Africa
at 8.82% and Indonesia at 4.08%' and the US is likely to overtake the UK 'as early as this month'.
This is key for lots of reasons but chiefly because, as Bango points out, if consumers in the US are getting interested then so will US businesses. For UK competitors that's a boon in the short-term. US investment and technical expertise will bring with it a raft of new applications, platforms and services that will drive the use of mobiles on the web throughout the developed world. In the long-term it is likely to mean that UK and European players will become consumed.
Much has been made of the UK's head-start in the mobile space. It can be most put down to the early stage at which operators agreed rules on inter-operability, for example, for text messaging. But the head-start is over and the iPhone has been, once again, a major driver.
On the web we saw a trend by which separate countries developed their cultural, technological and commercial environments independently. After a period of this island-based evolution, the most highly developed businesses then set out to conquer new territories. Those to have reached that state in the US proved to be the fittest and there remain hardly any UK-owned, multi-national web businesses - in fact, only Cheapflights occurs.
There appears to be no reason to expect anything different in the mobile battle for survival. The start that the UK had was the opportunity to have boats stationed outside territories such as the US when the market was ready for invasion. That time has come but the feeling is that we're still ship-building.
For users, that's fine. A Darwinistic philosophy always means the best will emerge and overcome. So we get the iPhone, hopefully we'll get a Gphone and businesses like DoubleClick will allow mobile advertising to function properly. For the mobile market, these are all good things. But, if you fancy getting nationalistic, then we'd probably best stick to cycling.
