The new Palm Pre is getting some very favorable early pseudo reviews, including when compared to the iPhone. But is it "better" than the iPhone?

Every wireless journalist or tech blogger, it seems, wants to crown this or that handset an "iPhone killer" or a "BlackBerry Killer" and so on. As one example, here's an article citing a Teletra exec. who claims the company's forthcoming Android phone  is "better than Pre." 

Which smartphone is the one to "beat"? Is it the iPhone, the G1, the Storm or, now, the Pre? While it's fun to compare all these handsets, we should step back for a moment and look at how fast the market is evolving.

Smartphones currently represent about 15% of the market. The thing that holds them back is price and the related cost of data plans. However, the price of these new smartphone handsets is now generally under $200. (The Pre hasn't been priced yet.) Phones like the HTC Touch/Pro that maintain higher price points will lose sales to other phones that are "sexier" and cheaper.

While we're probably never going to see smartphones achieve market dominance, we will likely 50% penetration (at least in the US) in a reasonable period of time. Why? Because "culturally" it will be important to have one of these phones to access the mobile Internet. And the people who buy these phones will indeed be going "online" with them, because that's the whole point. 

Over the next 10 years, in the US and EU, we're going to see a shift from the "desktop" to mobile devices as the primary access platform for the Internet. It's already happened in some developing countries without an installed base of PCs. In our research, we've already seen very striking levels of mobile search in the US. Search volumes on mobile devices will eventually overtake the desktop, with corresponding implications for paid search advertising.

Indeed, there are some profound implications for publishers and marketers in this shift. However most are still dealing with the transition from traditional to online media and haven't really considered mobile. That's why we're holding Internet2Go -- to help provide a "crash course" for marketers, agencies and other "mobile curious" folks.