The Next 4 Billion Connected People Won't Be Using HTML | Hacker News Reader

The Next 4 Billion Connected People Won't Be Using HTML

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20 pointsborism23 comments

The author states that people won't be using HTML, they'll be using SMS, MMS, or WAP. This is reasonable, but the author doesn't seem to understand that SMS (and the MMS extension of SMS) and WAP are protocols, whereas HTML is a markup language.

Perhaps a better dichotomy might be, "the next 4 billion connected won't be using HTML, they'll be using WML," or "the next 4 billion connected won't be using HTTP, they'll be using SMS/WAP."

But mixing up protocols and markup languages makes the author look like they don't understand the topic they're writing about.

But that's not the topic author is writing about!

WAP strikes me as an odd horse to hitch your wagon to in the first place. It may be that it's popular elsewhere, but I haven't had a phone that relied on a WAP browser since maybe 2002, and between iPhone, Android, Pre, WinMo, and Blackberry, I don't think most of them even support it, let alone rely on it.

Most of the mobiles built in the last few years support HTML quite well, but as you may know pure HTML is very little part of what we call Web (2.0) today.

Yeah, I am just thinking about all of the phones that have browsers sophisticated to handle most modern web apps. Even if the built ins can't handle it, you've got Opera which probably can. 3 of the ones I mentioned are even webkit-based. This seems the way of the future, not WAP.

But why would someone in the developed world need Web 2.0?

They're not spoiled by PC interface, so they won't require interface on the tiny (smart)phone screen to be alike.

I can see that angle of it, but it just seems more to me that you're better off sticking with markup the most clients can understand. I'm not too familiar with programming for low phones (or phones at all for that matter) but it doesn't strike me as unreasonable that even the low end will start to have webkit derived browsers over the next several years. I do admit to knowing nothing about how long that takes to filter its way down to the developing world.

Strange. This must be a difference in perspective based on unique characteristics of carriers in the United States. As an American, SMS and MMS are ubiquitous, but they represent a brutal cost structure that makes me not want to use them at all.

As for WAP, I've seen a lot of phones equipped with it that go unused based not just on the same reason (the cost structure of internet access on those phones) but also on usability: it wasn't until Mobile Safari and my iPhone's flat rate that I even wanted to attempt mobile internet access on a regular basis.

Just today, I had a conversation about this very topic. The topic was solving logistics for drug inventory in clinics in developing areas. The lowest common denominator for communications for now and the foreseeable future is SMS. The folks at headquarters can use PCs, online maps, and DBs to analyze the info. But the core data needs to be sent in from the field via SMS. Patients finding clinics and scheduling appointments and asserting need needs to be available through SMS.

Whether it is HTML, WAP, SMS or some other language/protocol yet to emerge is largely a moot point.

The big question to me as a mobile app developer is, how do you make and sell apps to "the next 4 billion"? And is this market segment even sellable to, given their low disposable income? This can easily be a billion $ question...

With 4 billion buyers, you can sell for pennies and still make a lot of money. Remember the marginal cost of software is zero.

Give me another example besides ringtones, please.

Example of what? Business model?

There are plenty of examples both in the article (bicycle calling providers) and elsewhere (mobile micro-finance).

And there are thousands of other uses people in places like Africa might be hungry for, but nobody really even tries to provide them with a solution.

I saw the bicycle calling provider, but my "yeah"-sensors somehow didn't fire. I don't think that kind of thing will see widespread adoption.

I've been reading about this too often, but nothing seems to have happened yet. How widespread is the micro-finance?

If any of these things would take off, maybe it would enhance economics to a point where people could afford real computers (or at least "real" mobile internet devices like the iPhone). In any case betting on an enormous market for WAP and SMS apps seems like a wild bet.

I've heard this same sentiment before many times. And it's pretty likely to be "true" in the simplest sense of the word. Smart phones will make huge inroads, even in the developing world.

But I've always found it to be enormously silly. It's silly to imagine that the entire developing world will gain access to smart phones and cellular networks and yet there will be no substantial change in their wealth. It also flies in the face of history. Looking back at the last 20, 50, and 100 years we see several countries, and hundreds of millions of people move from 3rd world to affluent, 1st world economies. To imagine that a future world filled with affluent individuals won't also purchase laptops or netbooks (devices which will undoubtedly be better and cheaper than they are today) is monumentally unimaginative.

Also, the line "won't be using HTML" is a great shock line, but it's just plain false on its face. The primary value of a smart phone is the ability to browse the plain-jane HTML based web. The "web as we know it" will become even more dominant in this scenario, not less.

You've missed the point.

They won't get PC-netbooks not because they couldn't, but because they don't need to. What use a netbook is if there's little-to-no electricity, no broadband access, no wifi or cable router, and you're illiterate? Zero.

With regards to HTML - perhaps author is mixing protocols and markup languages up. But that isn't the point. The point is that a lot of the "development" like Web 2.0 won't be accessible to people in the developing world. Show me a smartphone (well maybe except highest range iphone-android) that won't choke on your average DHTML/AJAX site.

If you are illiterate, SMS and WAP won't do much good either. But you can pay the micro-entrepreneur to read stuff for you, maybe.

Also, a netbook surfing via GSM might still be better than nothing. My first modem (1993) was probably slower than GSM, but I still used the internet a lot. YouTube was not around yet.

Apparently they do have electricity, because that would be needed for the phones, too. Especially the Nokia ones that need daily recharging.

I think you've missed my point. It's silly to imagine that the rest of the world will start buying smart phones yet they will remain without electricity, broadband, literacy, etc.

The numerous examples we have from history indicate this won't be the case. People value electricity, and sanitation, and literacy, and all the other things that are valued in first world economies. If people can perform work that pays enough for them to buy smart phones, then they will surely work to buy all those other things as well.

The image of some 3rd worlder sitting in a corrugated aluminum lean-to amidst filth and poverty while spending all their hard earned money on iPhone apps is fantasy. The 3rd world will get to work, they will make money, and slowly but surely they'll build infrastructure and acquire wealth and be just as wealthy as the 1st world. Taiwan did it. South Korea did it. Many countries in South America and Eastern Europe are doing it right now.

Back to the main point. In 5 years the "highest range" iphone-android phones will be obsolete. Phones of that class, the class that can browse the ajax/css web, will be so cheap they will be considered entry level phones. In 10 years iphone equivalent phones will be sold in blister packs with prepaid phone planes in convenience stores.

In short, the premise of this article is economically, culturally, and technologically naive in the extreme. It should not be taken seriously.

You say a third-worlder in a lean-to shack might not spend their hard-earned money on iPhone apps.

I lived in Rio de Janeiro in the early seventies as a small kid. My parents were missionaries and we'd visit very poor areas of town often, and some times we'd go to the famous "favelas" (slums) where people live in improvised lean-to-shack housing. People in the favelas didn't have much, but almost every corrugated-metal/wood/cardboard shack had a TV antenna.

These days people might not spend the money on the apps but they'll spend it on an iPhone or a smart-phone. They'll find a cheap way to get the apps they really need. In Brazil people love technology, especially when it helps them connect with others. I don't think it's much different in other third-world places.

Smartphones will become cheaper, more powerful, more rugged, and third-world customers will opt for them because they can't afford the PC yet want access to the wonderful things they can do on the web. Data plans will be ubiquitous even in poor areas, services will spring up where people can plug in every day for a small fee where there is no electricity, and people will learn to read when there's a reason to. They'll also shell out a bit more for the HTML and the bandwidth. HTML5 will win this battle.

In 1996, the year that it was introduced, the Motorola StarTac cost $1000.

How much would you pay for one today?

In 2007, the year that it was introduced, the iPhone 8GB cost $600 with a carrier subsidy.

How much would you pay for one today? Well, I don't know how much you would pay for one, but a more advanced model costs $99 with a carrier subsidy.

I don't think it is safe to say how the next 4 billion people are going to get online and what technology they will have access to.

> but a more advanced model costs $99 with a carrier subsidy.

It isn't sensible to talk about 'costs with carrier subsidy'. You might as well describe the cost of a rented apartment as the deposit.

The thing about Html is that it is a medium which can be read and written by anyone and no one owns. No one owning Html means that it can spread "frictionlessly", with no restrictions.

Everything that one might imagine would replace Html does not have these characteristics. That means that as mobile access to the web becomes the norm, it will replace any mobile specific technology, no matter how clever one makes them. What would you prefer - Kindle with no web or web with no Kindle? This should happen in Africa in the same way it has happened here.

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