The convergence of two of the fastest-growing communications technologies ever developed - mobile phones and the Internet - was billed as a potential Big-Bang moment for the business world.
In reality, it has been more a slow fizzle as the hundreds of billions of pounds spent on third-generation (3G) licences and the building of systems to support the new technology have contributed to high costs and slow take-up.
Pay-back time may be nigh. Within the last two years, the mobile internet market has grown from 200 million to cover more than half of the 1.3 billion mobile phones used worldwide. The 3G system, among other developments, has helped to build the foundations of a cultural revolution whose impact has been compared to the switch from the electric telegraph to the telephone in the last quarter of the 19th century.
According to industry experts, the number of internet-connected mobile phones will soon exceed by a wide margin the number of internet-connected PCs. Analysts peg the worldwide number of active PCs to be between 500 million and 750 million, well shy of that 1.3 billion cell-phone figure - and the gap is going to grow, particularly in places such as China, where generations may skip the PC altogether and move directly to smaller mobile units of one kind or another.
The PC industry responded early on, making the internet experience mobile through products such as Centrino-powered laptops and Wi-Fi-enabled pocket PCs, while the cellular industry is now well on the way to making its voice-based platform interactive through 3G technology. Both markets are likely to have a bright future in a sector from which different people want different things.
In that sense, the term mobile internet falls shy of explaining what is on offer: while some platforms do indeed provide the user with the same look and feel as they are used to on a PC, other devices, such as mobile phones, hand-held devices and micro-laptops, concentrate on sending and receiving timely, relevant nuggets of information sourced from the internet and combined with clever use of subscription information on the tastes and trends of the consumer, both personal and general.
It is a trend that network providers follow night and day to determine which mobile internet services are popular and which are not in order to develop applications essential to providing customers with a reliable and fast service and one that will work effectively in any format to avoid the kinds of incompatibilities suffered in the early days of stand-off between Apple and its Mac and Microsoft Windows-using PC fans.
One of the barriers to to growth was the clear conflict of attitudes between Internet and mobile-phone users. While internet users expect things to be free, and are prepared to accept a certain degree of technological imperfection, mobile phone users are accustomed to paying but expect a high level of service and reliability in return. Compaies such as NEC, Samsung, Sony and many a small development operation working with those industry giants, have played a big part in bringing the two sectors together in harmony.
The fall of charges to users - all good news for consumers - has affected the profit margins of mobile network operators but a new business model has emerged in Japan in which profit is made by data services which enables operators to attract subscribers.
That model, helped by the introduction of enhanced Java-supporting colour-screen units and off-the-shelf networks based on GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), has improved the quality of service beyond recognition in the past two years and is now spreading beyond Japan. As mobile internet usage grows, operators will come under increasing pressure to provide better ways of displaying information for those on the move and sold on the idea of less is more.
For the business world, in which time has always been money, the benefits of being linked to mobile internet systems are obvious: from providing the mobile director with access to a company's internal database, to doing research on the way to meetings, checking e-mails, being able to participate in teleconferences no matter where he or she is, to quickly creating and distributing minutes.
For operators, getting the model right will be critical to success but not all trade and traffic will go the way of one system. Wireless-network operators see themselves as potential gatekeepers to the mobile internet, and may be in a position to grab a share of online commerce revenues, which fixed-line Internet-access providers have failed to do. Hardware and software companies see a galaxy of opportunities in products that knit the internet and mobile networks together.
Meanwhile, watchdog-style organisations - such as the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) - are working on ways to ensure that the winners in the mobile internet revolution are not just the operators and service providers but consumers in a world where information is carried over different networks and components, not all of which could be called "standard".
Companies such as Eriksson believe that global open standards will help to generate worldwide traffic from satisfied customers, and therefore revenue for operators.
"Standardisation is essential in ensuring the success of third-generation, multimedia, broadband telecommunication," said a spokesman for Eriksson. "It is shaping the future of wireless communications. Whether crossing the language barriers and time zones of the expanding European Union, making their way through an ever more cosmopolitan China or island and culture hopping through a booming Southeast Asia, for today's telecom consumers wherever they take their handset is their home."
