Future of mobile internet v/s computer internet??

[drbiohealth]

I believe the mode of accessing internet will have a great bearing on the future of IDNs. Most of us today, I guess, assume that internet in future would primarily be accessed using a conventional computer like what is there today. Can a phone effectively supplement the role of a conventional computer? My sense is that in the near future a phone could potentially double up as a good computing device which may allow better internet user experience compared to what exists today. I feel this is an important issue that merits a discussion here. Few points that may be considered as a starter,

How effectively internet can be accessed from mobile phones/devices as of today? How is the experience generally? Are people comfortable accessing internet through their phones? How will this change in future ~ 5 years down the line?

I would be curious to hear from you all on this aspect as this might throw some light in part on the possible potential of different IDN markets?

[Prodigy]

You've hit the nail on the head. In Japan, people access the internet through their phones on a daily basis for both e-mail and education. They even have sqaure "codes" for easy access.

Hey, people even have navigation devices built into the the basic models over here (AU). They also use their handphones to purchase items at certain locations and as a train pass.

In 5 years, skys the limit.

[Rubber Duck]

China and Korea as well I believe.

[drbiohealth]

Interesting!

How do people use their phones for education on the net? Isn't the phone screen/keypad small enough for their comfort? And, what kind of education are you talking about?

Thanks.

Originally Posted by ChinaStar

You've hit the nail on the head. In Japan, people access the internet through their phones on a daily basis for both e-mail and education. They even have sqaure "codes" for easy access.

Hey, people even have navigation devices built into the the basic models over here (AU). They also use their handphones to purchase items at certain locations and as a train pass.

In 5 years, skys the limit.

If "phone internet" becomes pervasive then I clearly see that IDNs of all tech savvy countries getting valuable in course of time.

Originally Posted by Rubber Duck

China and Korea as well I believe.

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by drbiohealth

Interesting!

How do people use their phones for education on the net? Isn't the phone screen/keypad small enough for their comfort? And, what kind of education are you talking about?

Thanks.

Information density in Chinese Hanzi and Japanese Kanji is huge compared with English or Hindi. We would need screens 4 times the size to get the same effect.

[Prodigy]

You can do a gazillion things on a phone here... wow... wher to start. Language Education started on the Nintendo and Playstation portbale systems and its moving on to cell phones now. They surf for information and directions and pretty much everything.

All the Japanese I work with however, even in the office, do not use type ins, unless its a portal site

its too hard for them to spell out english words which is why i have a tight feeling that this JUST MIGHT work.

They don't type anything in English on computers... not even into the search engine bar.

[drbiohealth]

Then, how do chinese phone keypads look like...do they contain all their alphabets? I have seen hindi mobile phones, they contain almost the complete alphabet set on their keypads.

Originally Posted by Rubber Duck

Information density in Chinese Hanzi and Japanese Kanji is huge compared with English or Hindi. We would need screens 4 times the size to get the same effect.

[Olney]

You know ChinaStar this is the ONE HUGE thing that makes me keep registering IDN Domains. I too keep this in the forfront of reasons why Japanese need IDN Domains.

People (Not members here) have a huge misunderstanding that since Japanese like to study English they actually function in English too.

Typing in the URL will happen only with IDN Domains...

Originally Posted by ChinaStar

All the Japanese I work with however, even in the office, do not use type ins, unless its a portal site

its too hard for them to spell out english words which is why i have a tight feeling that this JUST MIGHT work.

They don't type anything in English on computers... not even into the search engine bar.

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by drbiohealth

Then, how do chinese phone keypads look like...do they contain all their alphabets? I have seen hindi mobile phones, they contain almost the complete alphabet set on their keypads.

You can input Chinese in a number of ways. You can use Latin Keyboard to input Pinyin. There are special Chinese or Wubi keyboards that look much like a Querty Keyboard from which you compile the characters with combinations of upto 5 Keystokes. Chinese characters are completely different from Alphabetic characters, so input methods will be different. I guess with Indic scripts because most characters are combinations of a constant and a vowel, it may be possible as an alternative to having a key for each constant to use a shift key in combination with the constanants, thereby reducing the alphabet to about the same size as Latin.

[Prodigy]

Hey buddy, your preaching to the converted

One thing that people have to keep in mind as well is that the Japanese consumer is also the most aestheically senstive consumer as well. Beauty and aethetics are everything here. Beautiful names are more memorable than functional names in terms of concept development.

I have a Director here that searches everytime he needs to go to the Train schedule website... even though the website's name is in Japanese. Just tells you how much they need a comprehensible type-in system,

[drbiohealth]

Let me get this clear. As I understand there are two things here, i) e-services that are provided by the mobile operator himself, and ii) actual internet surfing. E-services provided by the operator may have 100s of features including education, navigation, weather, ticket booking, hotel booking etc. However, these e-services are not relevant to us all as the content generally is pushed by the operator. On the contrary, what is relevant to us is to note how users go to any site of their choice. Have you seen, for example, people playing poker at say partypoker dot com or any other such site. Or, have you seen people buying books from amazon and others? If this is the case then its cool. I am not sure which of these two (e-services/internet surfing) you were refering to when you talked about education.

Originally Posted by ChinaStar

You can do a gazillion things on a phone here... wow... wher to start. Language Education started on the Nintendo and Playstation portbale systems and its moving on to cell phones now. They surf for information and directions and pretty much everything.

I guess you meant keypad of the phone when you said "keyboard". Phones in India have an option to work with hindi (or any local) with nearly all hindi letters inscribed on the keys of the phone keypad. Actually its fairly easy to use these phones for sending messages.

Originally Posted by Rubber Duck

You can input Chinese in a number of ways. You can use Latin Keyboard to input Pinyin. There are special Chinese or Wubi keyboards that look much like a Querty Keyboard from which you compile the characters with combinations of upto 5 Keystokes. Chinese characters are completely different from Alphabetic characters, so input methods will be different. I guess with Indic scripts because most characters are combinations of a constant and a vowel, it may be possible as an alternative to having a key for each constant to use a shift key in combination with the constanants, thereby reducing the alphabet to about the same size as Latin.

[touchring]

Well, since you know both japanese and chinese, do you think chinese are more comfortable with abc.com due to pinyin?

[Prodigy]

I think that if you had an abc in hanyupinyin that would be good... I have my bases covered

I actually have abt 100 sites in hanyupinyin for .com that I registered at the start of this year...

Im not sure how far this idn.com will go, but it's good to see so much opportunity!