Alex Barza, Google Mobile Ad Sales Lead, and Surojit Chatterjee, Google Product Manager, present “Mobile as the Next ‘Big Bet'” at Think with Google summit.
During the presentation Barza quotes Morgan Stanley’s prediction that “half of web traffic will one day be accessed from mobile devices vs. the desktop.”
The title of their presentation was “Mobile as the next Big Bet”.
From a company known for informing their decisions with data, isn’t their choice of the word “Bet” in their presentation title somewhat odd?
While Morgan Stanley’s prediction i.e., bet that half of all web traffic will eventually come from mobile devices is nothing more than simple arithmetic – I don’t believe Morgan Stanley also said half of all searches will then come from mobile devices too.
Maybe this is why Google perceives Mobile as a “Big Bet” – because the odds are long at best that mobile search will scale along with mobile device (smartphone) penetration.
Even at mobile device (smartphone) market saturation, mobile search volume will not surpass desktop search query volume.