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What’s the future for Mashup? TravelMole guest comment by Michael Lacy, CEO of Handy Group
I attended a ‘Mashup’ event last week which was billed as a debate around whether there were opportunities in mobile for anyone other than the networks and handset manufacturers.
In a room filled with 150 representatives of some aspect or other of the future in mobile, it wasn’t perhaps too surprising that everyone agreed that opportunities abound.
What no one could quite agree on though was what was going to be the ‘big thing’ and who was going to come up with it.
Billions of every kind of currency are being spent around the world in support of the mobile internet and the vehicle it provides to target already profiled users with all kinds of media messages.
Maybe not all, but certainly most of the 150 people in that room are not only convinced that opportunity exists, but that the opportunity far outweighs internet as we know it today.
This sounds outlandish but in a few years there will be five billion handsets around the world that in theory could all access the internet.
In terms of penetration this knocks fixed line internet for six, it even knocks TV for six!
Can anyone afford to ignore mobile internet is a very easy question to answer given the facts. For some businesses in some geographic areas with certain propositions it will certainly be either more or less important.
What is exciting is that mobile will likely spawn areas of business that don’t even exist today.
Taking the business critical functionality from an existing web proposition and expecting it to work on mobile just wont be enough.
This medium has many infrastructure issues that are constantly evolving, offering both restrictions in deployment but also – importantly – has specific and unique opportunities yet to be harnessed.
*Handy Group provides the travel industry with solutions to using the mobile internet as a distribution channel.
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