Mobile paradoxes: European emergence of mobile internet, users, and markets

In this paper, I review and critically discuss the histories of mobile Internet and markets in Europe. I examine the emergence of mobile Internet as an important though relatively minor part of European development of mobile technology in the 1980s and 1990s. I take up the story of how Europe then failed to capitalize on its global success with 2 G digital mobiles, and faltered with initiatives in mobile web and mobiles services in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I discuss the various factors It is with the smartphone, from 2008 onwards, that mobile Internet becomes widely established and used in Europe — yet this takes diverse, complex forms. Finally, I offer concluding remarks on the implications of the paradoxes in these mobile Internet histories for understanding of the evolution of complex socio-technical systems, including the contemporary imaginaries of integrated digital markets in Europe and elsewhere.