Mobile Phones Better Than Netbooks?

What is the difference between a mobile phone and a laptop? While the answer was quite obvious some years ago, the lines that distinguish the two are wearing thin each day. The mobile phone is taking on the mantle of becoming the next generation computing device. The innovations in the field of technology are not as much on laptops and computers as on the mobile phone. The handheld device has come a long way from just being able to make a call to a complete gadget that takes on other tasks with ease.

Talking about the internet, it has come a long way from dial up to broadband to wifi. Nowadays, you no longer need to sit on your laptop while juggling various other tasks. Internet on the mobile phone was introduced as GPRS in the early part of the last decade. Viewing stripped down versions of websites and that too with a slow speed was indeed unattractive. The only beneficiaries were sites delivering wallpapers, videos, sound clips, etc. Today, you can surf the internet on your phone with decent speeds, having an option to view the glamorized mobile versions of the web pages or the website in its full effect.  In fact, people tend to check their emails on their phones these days.

This can be accredited to the smartphones that have captured the market by storm. With touch phones and bigger screens being the ‘in’ thing right now, accessing mails is not just the privilege of blackberry users. The introduction of the iPhone was the tipping point in favour of smartphones.

The recently published Sensis e-business report, based on an interview with 1000 consumers, claims that more people have started using the internet on their phone than ever before. The report states that about half the respondents in their 30s use the web on their phone at home and work in spite of having a computer nearby. With regard to the kind of information accessed, maps and directions lead the foray followed closely by weather, news, social networking sites and sports results. This makes perfect sense as the mobile is the only way to find out directions accurately on the move.

Quoting numbers, technology analyst Gartner said that the mobile device will exceed computers by 2013. In terms of sheer numbers, about 1.82 billion mobile phones will grace the market.

Personally speaking, a few years ago, I never thought I would start using internet and checking mails on my phone so early, a feat I deemed fit only for businessmen. With faster processors forming the core of smartphones, multi tasking has become easier too. Android based phones deliver quality content to your 3 inch screen at good speeds. With the introduction of 3G technology, web browsing is bound to become faster. Video streaming on your phone is a reality these days. The plethora of apps is mind boggling.

This said, phones cannot make up for the lack of a physical keyboard where you can type easily and big screens. The heavy duty applications also cannot run on mobile phones. But, the sole purpose of a netbook is to easily access the internet. With a handheld device at your disposal quite capable of doing that, do you actually require a netbook?