Why small devices are big news for journalists

The great and the good in the world of mobile devices are heading to Barcelona for their annual shindig, the Mobile World Congress (MWC). Many are likely to be in good cheer following the news this week that sales of mobiles in 2010 increased by 32% on the figure for 2009.

Analysis firm Gartner put total sales of mobile devices at 1.6 billion. To picture the sheer size of the mobile market, it's worth pointing out that more mobile phones were sold in 2010 alone than the total number of computers currently owned worldwide.

Another indication that the personal computer is taking a back-seat to the mobile phone can be seen in the fact that in the last three months of 2010 people bought more smartphones than they did laptops, netbooks, desktops, tablets etc.

Sales of smartphones - internet-connected phones with browser, email and app abilities - grew by 87% in this period; computers by just 3%. That monitor on your desk and the unit underneath is slowly but surely going the way of the cassette and the pager - obsolescence. One last stat: on current trends, three-quarters of all the phones in the UK are set to be smartphones by 2015.

But back to the Mobile World Congress. It brings together many of the leading figures in this rapidly evolving industry and is often where big announcements are made. Rumours this year swirl around handsets with 3D screens and phones that can be used to make purchases. Indeed, the newly merged Orange and T-Mobile group, Everything Everywhere, recently announced it will be launching a system of mobile payments in the UK later this year.

It was at the MWC this time last year that Erik Huggers, the soon-to-be-former boss of the BBC's Future Media and Technology division, revealed that the Corporation would be unveiling a series of apps designed to deliver BBC Online services to mobile phones and tablets.

A news app for the iPhone and iPad duly came last summer; and, with perfect timing just ahead of this MWC, new apps went live on Thursday. Owners of iPad and higher-end Android mobile devices can now enjoy iPlayer, including live television and radio. The apps have been optimised to work specifically on each device, although the sheer range of Android-based devices has led one well-regarded tech blog to complain of the Android app being somewhat "hit and miss" in the way it works. The Guardian was more positive - "a hit, with some minor annoyances".

The proliferation of smartphones, and the lower-spec mobiles which are, for now, still more widely used, has led to significant changes in news consumption. Traffic to the BBC Mobile news pages is significantly higher in the morning than in the rest of the working day. People are using the convenience of their devices at home as they wake and on the morning commute to find out what's been happening overnight. There is another spike later, with phone users taking time in the evening to catch up with the day's events.

These trends were echoed recently in a major study by Read it Later - a website-cum-application that does exactly what it says on the tin. Its data showed when articles which had been saved were subsequently read, and it also found pronounced morning and evening peaks. For iPad owners, the evening spike was far more pronounced.

The phone has also changed how we consume news in a much more fundamental way, in the US at least. A study of 300,000 people showed that, when they wanted to find breaking news and information, their device of choice was the phone - not the internet on their desktop computer; not television; and not (by a long way) newspapers.

So those are the changes for news consumers. What about the implications for news producers?

The past 15 years have seen the rise of 24-hour news networks and news websites, both constantly updated. But with mobile devices meaning the news can now be consumed wherever and whenever the user is, do news organisations need to think differently about the content they deliver?

While most major news organisations have mobile-friendly websites or specially produced apps for smartphones, the vast majority of these are simply the full, familiar desktop websites presented differently - largely the same content, but cramming a quart into a pint-pot, if you will.

Times may be straitened, but can news operations afford not to give a bigger focus and more resources to their mobile-friendly offerings?