Mobile search market – not so hot

I have to agree with Om over Piper Jaffray projections of $11 billion for mobile search market. Atleast half the cell phone users in the US do not use SMS actively. Atleast 75% of the users have outdated handsets and are locked in a year or two agreement. Its only users like Om who jump onto the latest handset in the market 😉

What are your thoughts on mobile search and which technology would you bet on in the mobile search domain?

Just like how Google is unveiling Writely, the Web Word Processor, which is speculated to be a cool and different from our routine MS-Word, so also, for the Mobile space it will be a totally different app. My experience suggests that its not just “e-“, “v-“, or “m-” nabling of technologies, it has to undergo some kind of transformation to be cool to use which ultimately makes it HOT in the market.

Finally, I don’t think US is the best market for m-search & commerce. With just 207 Million subscribers in the US at the end of 2005, it is way behind the number subscribers in the East(Japan, China, Malaysia and India). The East and the Europe have worldclass 3G & 4G infrastructure with highly affordable subscription rates for the mobile savvy consumers. While for the internet era, it was the opposite. I guess Mobile 1.0 is a whole different game than Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.