Mobile web cage fight in the making!

The who’s who of significant and would be wireless web players are converging for the wireless fair next week. Many attendees who will come to exchange information and and engage in cooperation are soon to be combatants. With all of the hype we’ve seen over the years about the promise of a truly portable utility, the pieces are in place for an explosion of devices, apps and loosely defined open services. In every category there will be a bloody battle for supremacy. I’m predicting the dominant battle will be between Microsoft and Google. I’m also predicting that Google will quickly learn to embrace Microsoft’s no quarter tactics and that Ballmer will never attend burning man.

And the scramble to capitalize on that opportunity will loom over all other business at next week’s Mobile World Congress.

“Web, Web, Web — if you ain’t walking onto the stand hand in hand with a Web guy you ain’t no one,” said Ben Wood, chief analyst at UK-based telecoms and IT research firm CCS Insight.

The outcome of the struggle to win the mobile Web will not only be crucial for the combatants but will decide how the mobile Web is experienced by billions of people.

At the fair, visitors will be on alert for sightings of prototypes of the Gphone — phones built on a Google open software platform that will help it loosen up the market and extend its online advertising power into mobile search ads.

Chip designer ARM Holdings Plc, for one, will show Google’s so-called Android platform in action at the four-day fair that starts in Barcelona on Monday, a source close to the company has told Reuters.

Google rival Yahoo’s alternative strategy of refining its mobile search and teaming up with operators to make it more visible to consumers, will also come under scrutiny, especially as it mulls a $45 billion bid from Microsoft.

Nokia is expected to give more details of its own push into Internet services, including gaming and music and video sharing offerings that it started to roll out last week.

“I’ve heard people say many times that this is the year the mobile Web’s going to happen … but this year I’m getting a different feeling,” said Paul Nerger, an executive at dotMobi, which registers mobile domains and helps build mobile sites.

“It’s a question of when we get to critical mass. I think it’s this year.”(from Yahoo)