In 2013 the internet will become a mostly mobile medium. Who will be the winners and losers?
The year 2002 was a turning-point for the telephone, invented 126 years earlier.
For the first time, the number of mobile phones overtook the number of
fixed-line ones, making the telephone a predominantly mobile technology. During
2013 the same thing will happen to the internet, just 44 years after its
ancestor, ARPANET, was first switched on. The number of internet-connected
mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablet computers, will exceed the number
of desktop and laptop personal computers (PCs) in use, according to figures from
Morgan Stanley, an investment bank. There is not a direct
correlation between devices and people, because many people use multiple
devices, both fixed and mobile. But IDATE, a consultancy, reckons that the
number of people accessing the internet via mobile devices will overtake the
number using fixed-line connections in mid-2014.
