Will mobile internet drive online population surge?

Norwest Venture Partners Partner Pramod Haque in an interview to mint has said "Mobile Internet will be bigger here than broadband, PC-based Internet."

Even the economic times recenltly featured an article where it tom tommed about internet reaching its subcriber target 3 years ahead of time based on mobile access to the internet. It also outlined the fact that  internet on mobile is not a pure play, feature rich service and thus those who access the internet on mobile phones cannot be counted among the subscribers.

Internet on mobile according to me would be used primarily for email access and VAS downloads. I doubt whether a large no of the mobile internet accessing population is doing so for accessing websites or even mobile search.

Though recently we had blogged about a portal called phirki.mobi for mobile users launched by Smile Studio. We had also mentioned a survey which stated that 9% of the total internet users on mobile are Indians.

Keeping these trends in mind it does look like mobile internet is the way to go as over 183 million mobile phone subscribers cannot be ignored. But on the other hand the mobile internet space has to evolve both interms of access charges and in terms of content and usability. As the small screen will bring minor benefits unless and until one figures out a cost effective and better usability experience for the users. But on the whole will it lead to more people accessing the internet from their homes? or offices? Yes! As mobility sinks in along with stickiness of web applications being used on mobile its impact will be seen on pc driven use of internet as well.