Up until recently the world of mobile Internet access has been horrible. You generally had to use primitive browsers on cell phones that don't render pages anything like they appear on your computer. Seemingly each phone displayed pages differently making mobile development a very painful process. Most web developers avoided making mobile versions of their sites and most cell phone users failed to see any reason to pay an extra $30-40 a month for a data plan to suffer through this experience.
The verdict is in. People don't want this crippled Internet. They want the "real" Internet. They want pages that look the same as they do on their computer.
A number of recent devices are helping to make this possible. One of the biggest selling points of Apple's iPhone with includes a full version of their Safari browser. At the same time Opera is offering Opera Mobile and Opera Mini to give a full browsing experience to many cell phones.
Then earlier this month Apple released its iPod Touch. Basically an iPhone without the phone, it retains the iPhone's ability to surf the web on a full version of Safari over any available Wi-fi connection opening the door to many other mobile entertainment devices having full Internet access.
This trend is only going to gain strength as more and more devices add these capabilities and people are drawn to what we see. Just as TiVo users can't conceive of going back to a world without time-shifted TV, you won't be able to conceive of not being able to access anything on the Internet from anywhere in the world. This is the real mobile Internet that is just beginning to take off.
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