Mobile Web and the White House

How important is mobile web browsing becoming? Even the President now has an app.

A post at ReadWriteWeb this morning discusses the White House's new iPhone app and mobile website. I love the post's title too: US Government in Your Pocket.
The White House announced the release of a new White House iPhone App via a late night blog post on WhiteHouse.gov. Included in the mobile application are features like news items, photos, blog posts, videos, and even live video streaming. That's right - live video.

Granted, the Obama tean have been strong tech adopters since the early days of the campaign, but the underlying message here is there are now enough people expecting they can get their news via their phone that major speeches like the State of the Union can be streamed live to your iPhone.

Still think your business can afford to ignore the mobile web? Later in the article they provide some interesting statistics [the bold emphasis was added by me]:
Also of interest: the White House states that mobile web use has grown over 100% in the last year in the U.S. and higher worldwide. That's putting it mildly. Over the past year, we've heard from numerous companies and analyst firms regarding the explosive growth of the mobile web. For example, in spring of 2009, Opera [manufacturers of a popular alternative web browser] reported a 157% increase in usage of their Opera Mini web browser and a 319% increase in year-over-year data traffic. AdMob release a report in October revealing a 19% increase year-over-year in iPhone/iPod Touch data traffic alone and last month, analyst firm IDC predicted over a billion mobile web users by 2010. Ignoring the mobile masses at this point would be a mistake and it's clear that the White House understands that.

Mobile web is changing the game. No; better to say it already has changed the game. Within the next couple of years, companies that ignore mobile computing will wind up looking like the companies that ignored the internet in the early 90's; behind the times, out of touch, and racing to catch up.