Mobile Internet will leave behind the desktop one with 131% increase by 2013

Mobile Internet is forecast to outstrip desktop Internet in a short term according to the reports issued by Morgan Stanley. "Regarding pace of change, we believe more users will likely connect to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within 5 years."

There are five converging trends: 3G, social networking, video, voice-over-IP (VoIP) and improving mobile internet devices (MIDs). The report claims that Apple's iPhone and iTouch ecosystem are exhibiting the fastest user growth in consumer technology history. It says that the number of MIDs, from smartphones to games consoles, rumoured tablets and netbooks, will vastly outgrow the number of desktop PCs and talks of more than ten billion units.

However, a closed MID device market will restrict selling opportunities for MID storage component suppliers. It should mean that MID form factor storage shipments will be on a huge growth curve, suggesting good news is coming for MID NAND flash shippers. That should certainly benefit Samsung but other NAND foundry owners, such as Toshiba/SanDisk, could also benefit as billions of megabytes of the stuff will be needed for the billions of MID devices coming.

The three service suppliers will certainly win the race according to Morgan Stanley. The report says: "We believe Facebook has the potential to serve as a communications platform/engine of one-to-one, one-to-some and one-to-many (and visa versa) [sic] for the mobileInternet… Additional platform companies that appear to be well positioned for the rapid changes related to the evolution of the mobile Internet include Tencent and Skype."

The reports say that Facebook has 430 million users and more than 137 per cent year-on-year user count growth. YouTube is identified as having 466 million users with 35 per cent year-on-year growth. Skype has 521 million registered users, a number which is growing by more than 40 per cent year on year.

Thus, it is predicted that by 2013 mobile data traffic will rise 66-fold, at a 131% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).