Mobile Internet is the new PC revolution

Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker presented a major collection of charts and notes about the economy and developments on the web at the Web 2.0 Summit this week. There are some mind-blowing numbers and observations about the “mobile Internet” in these charts.

MS Economy Internet Trends 102009 FINAL

I remember when PCs arrived on the scene, when corporations started adopting those tools to empower individuals and small departments to get work done without having to wait for the slow-moving “Data Processing” departments. DP professionals hated these uncontrolled devices as they proliferated everywhere. The same thing happened when the Palm Pilot and other early PDAs arrived. Today, the PC and even corporate-owned mobile devices have largely been brought under control in larger companies (and it’s killing their transformational utility, by the way).

But the arrival of the mobile web into the pockets of millions of people worldwide is changing things in ways we don’t yet see. Check out the slides. Look at the astronomical growth rates of data consumption on the iPhone platform. The mobile web is how we must serve the public interest going forward. We don’t have to forget the standard PC and browser, but we have to meet the mobile needs of users in lots of new ways.

Check out the slides and consider the (near) future.

NOTE: Found via Google Reader’s new “Popular Items” feature.