• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, December 15, 2008

Anyone expecting 2009 to be the long-awaited "Year of Mobile" may have to wait a little longer. Wireless devices will be the primary means of connecting to the Internet for most people worldwide in 2020, according to a new report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The "Future of the Internet III" study, surveying nearly 600 Internet experts about the role of technology in the year 2020, suggested that the combination of portability and relative affordability will turn the cell phone into the leading Internet gateway 12 years from now.

There will be about 4 billion cell phones worldwide by the end of 2008, with up to 15% that are Internet-enabled, according to figures from market database Wireless Intelligence cited in the Pew report. About 1.6 billion people currently use the Web.

And while it may seem hard to imagine now, the ascendance of the mobile phone will be aided by a set of universal standards allowing cell users to maintain consistent service across different parts of the globe.

"By 2020, we'll have standard network connections around the world. ... Billions of people will have joined the Internet who don't speak English. They won't think of these things as 'phones' either--these devices will be simply lenses on the online world," said Susan Crawford, founder of OneWebDay and an Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) board member, within the report.

Indeed, many of the Web experts agreed that future mobile phones will function more as computers than phones. "By 2020 I don't think it will be so easy to distinguish between a mobile phone and a laptop," said Steve Jones, co-founder of the Association of Internet Researchers and associate dean at the University of Illinois-Chicago. "These will blend into a general 'mobile computing' category of device (for which we probably don't yet have a name)."

The trend of handheld computers has already begun with smartphones like the iPhone and the BlackBerry, but is still mostly limited to business users or other affluent consumers.

In that vein, the Pew study also suggests that mobile technology may offer a better alternative for expanding Internet access than computers through projects such as the One Laptop Per Child Initiative.

However, not all the experts surveyed by Pew envisioned a boundless future for mobile. Some expressed doubts about open networks, bandwidth and screen size, among other aspects of cell phones.

Social media researcher Danah Boyd, of Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, noted that traditional wireless carriers have little incentive to service poor populations.

"If the carriers continue to own the market, network access through mass adoption of the mobile will be far slower than if governments would begin blanketing their land with WiFi (or network access on other spectrum channels) as a public-good infrastructure project," she told the Pew researchers.

Others believe the limitations of the mobile screen will remain a barrier to wider types of use. According to Hal Varian, chief economist at Google: "The big problem with the cell phone is the UI (user interface), particularly on the data side. We are waiting for a breakthrough."

Among other key findings from the Pew study, voice-recognition technology and touchscreens for the Internet will be more prevalent by 2020. The study also predicts that the divide between personal and work time and physical and virtual reality will be further erased, with mixed results for social relations.

When it comes to online regulation, content holders may be dismayed to learn that experts don't expect things to look much different than today. Those seeking to enforce intellectual property laws will remain locked in a continuing battle with software "crackers," who will find new ways to copy and share content without payment, according to the study.