Privacy vs mobility

Many people think that the thing about the mobile services is the fact that they are mobile. As you carry your mobile phone always, you can access the service from pretty much everywhere you are. Your PC does not go in your pocket, but stays at home or at your office, so the Internet stays there.

Sure. Mobile services have the advantage of being accessible nearly everywhere compared to the good old fixed Internet services. Personally, I still think that the mobility is not the thing. Far more interesting aspect of mobile services is the privacy. Pretty close to everyone in developed countries have a mobile phone. I read rather recently an article which stated that approximately 70% of the Finnish households have broadband Internet access (at least 256kbit/s). I am quite sure that the vast majority of those households just have one PC connected to the Internet. And as the average size of a household is about 2, it makes me assume that Personal Computer as a term is questionable.

Mobile phones are far more personal than PCs. People are often sharing a PC, but none of the people that I know are actually sharing a mobile phone. In 99% of the cases, you know for sure who will answer, when you call a mobile number. This has made me believe that exactly this is the key to understand why some mobile services will fly and others won't.

Forget the mobility: "mobile Internet" is not about bringing the Internet everywhere you go. It is about being able to do personal things. Some folks have already figured that out. Maybe it was obamamobile.mobi that made the difference in the US presidential elections [BTW - the site seems to have disappered] ? Possibly not, but Facebook's mobile site is the most popular mobile site in UK for this very reason.