Since getting an iPhone about a year ago, I’ve found myself using using my laptop less and less often while on the move.  Sure, the iPhone has a tiny screen compared to even the smallest laptop or netbook, but my mobile computing needs are fairly lightweight and not having to lug a laptop around is a blessing.

The success of Apple’s iPhone is attracting host of other companies into the smartphone segment.  Besides the traditional mobile phone manufacturers, traditional PC makers are also eying this buoyant market segment with great ambition.  The devices they are creating are becoming more powerful and  feature rich.  These smarter mobile devices, coupled with increasingly ubiquitous wireless broadband networks, point to an emerging revolution in personal computing.

The BBC News website takes a look at the mobile future and examines how the mobile phone is slowly taking over the mantle as the centre of your social and multimedia experience.

The iPhone has finally landed on our shores – more than 1,000 people descended on Singtel Comcentre at midnight yesterday to be among the first official owners of the 3G Apple iPhone in Singapore. Even before Singtel’s launch, though, there were an estimated 10,000 iPhone in use locally – mainly unlocked versions of the original 2G iPhones.

I myself have been using one as my primary mobile phone for the past three months. From my experience, the hype and excitement surrounding the iPhone is justified – mostly. Sure, it is not the most feature-rich of phones currently available: no SMS forwarding; no video capability; no stereo-bluetooth; etc. Overall, though, I must say that it has been the most competent and intuitive smart phone I’ve ever used.

In my opinion, the two areas in which the iPhone excels are accessing the Internet and synchronizing data. The iPhone’s web browser, which is a mobile version of the Apple’s Safari browser, is far superior to those found on any other mobile phone. It is no accident that a far higher percentage of iPhone users access the web regularly compared to any other mobile phone.

Having struggled to keep my personal information synchronized between my PCs and a variety of mobile devices over the past decade, I am also well and truly impressed at how effectively Apple has implemented this potentially frustrating process. Dock your iPhone with your Mac and your email accounts, calendars, contacts, music and photos are synced with minimum fuss – no messing about with complex configuration options or dealing with frustrating sync conflicts.

The iPhone will definitely evolve into a dominant mobile web platform fairly quickly. I believe it is already the best smart phone option for small businesses wishing to make their workforce more mobile and productive.

Market research firm Frost & Sullivan expects to see robust growth in Singapore’s online content market over the next 5 years. Worth over SGD 30-million in 2008, it is expected to grow to over SGD 165-miilion by 2013.

Online gaming dominates the local content market now. Other content services include online music and videos. However, it is online gaming that has taken off significantly here, driven by the popularity of community focussed MMOGs (massively multi-player online games).

Singapore’s planned next-generation National Broadband Network will certainly give the online content market a fillip by making it more feasible to provide bandwidth intensive services such as Video-on-Demand.

However, I personally feel that it is the new mobile devices coming onto the market that will really boost the market. Apple’s iPhone has shown how a truly mobile device can effectively tap into the Web. Some of the 1st-generation applications on its fledgling App Store already demonstrate how ubiquitous, always-on connection to the Internet can be genuinely useful.

Most of the successful mobile apps do not require massive bandwidth or production infrastructure . Instead, the critical factors are to have relevant content and to present it intuitively through well designed user interfaces. Providing such relevant, localized & niche content is a field where you don’t really need to be big to succeed. So, I do expect that small businesses can take a big bite of the SGD 165-miilion online content market come 2013.

Yesterday, Apple head-honcho Steve Jobs finally unveiled the long awaited iPhone SDK (Software Development Kit – a collection of software tools and documentation designed to help programmer write new software for the platform). Until now the software on the iPhone was closed to developers, and programmers who wanted to create software for the device had to resort fairly complex ‘hacks’ to get their software working on the device.