The blog Communities Dominate Brands (CDB) has a long post on differences and similarities between the mobile as a mass media compared to other mass media:

I often hear various internet experts talk about how limiting the mobile phone is for internet consumption. That there are problems with scrolling, and the keypad entry is cumbersome, and we lack a mouse on the phone. This is as stupid as the TV experts. We should NOT try to replicate the existing internet onto the mobile. Mobile is not a “small internet”, it is a NEW mass media. As different from the internet as TV is from radio. We can do so much MORE on the phone that cannot be done on the internet.

The PC-based internet is the sixth media.

More:

But mobile adds five elements not possible on the previous six mass media, making the mobile the inherently superior mass media. First, the mobile is personal. It is the first truly personal mass media.

Yes, the personal aspect is extremely important. In fact, it might as well be called personal phone rather than mobile phone. Jan Chipchase makes a similar observation when it comes to personal TV vs mobile TV.

According to CDB the mobile is also billable on a micro-level (debatable since it’s really only being used for minute-counting for speech and for SMS - the operators are yet to implement a general billing mechanism).

There’s lots more interesting points in the text. Read it!

Updated: read more about mobile^d^d^d - sorry - personal TV here.