Smartphones will shake up paid content debate

Media companies longing to bring a paid-for culture to the Internet might just get what they want if they pay more attention to the smartphone revolution that is changing the way people access the Web.

Huge numbers now use mobile phones instead of desktop computers to get online -- a development that has spawned whole new business models in China, the world's biggest Internet market. Paying to read content on the Web, an outlandish idea as recently as a year ago, is slowly but surely establishing itself as the next business model in the Western media mainstream, spearheaded by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. But meantime, sales of smartphones -- part of a telecoms economy very different from the PC Web -- are set to outpace sales of desktop computers by 2012, IT research firm Gartner said this week. Some believe it could be as early as this year. And in China -- which has more Internet users than any other nation -- paid content is a non-starter.