A look at social media, mobile and web 2.0 by an MIT nerd

Posted on May. 07 2010 by Jonny F

Get mobile or get out

In looking at registrations to some of the sites that I’m involved with, I’ve notice some incredible trends over the last few months. First mobile is growing like crazy but from what I’m seeing its not mobile web browsing. It’s all about the apps. Well that is not great news for developers who now have to deal with so many different platforms, standards, approvals and not to mention how to test across all these devices, it is opening up a new wave of innovation and opportunity. On one site we had 1500 registrations over the last month and more than half came from a mobile app up. Mobile browsing only accounted for less than 5% on that site but app use is taking over and it is still dominated by iPhone. Android is growing fast but the iPhone is still where most of the action is. And while Blackberry reported selling more phones last quarter than the iPhone, their users are not yet embracing apps in the same way. Not sure why that is. Did Apple just make it more fun? Did they make it easier to find and discover or is it just that the demographic of an iPhone user is different from a Blackberry user. Time will tell but developers who aren’t looking at mobile seriously right now are missing out on a big big party.