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Amid the Atom news frenzy from Intel in Shangai this week and the release of mobile device software like Google’s Android OS and the Skyfire browser for Windows Mobile, it is evident that probably very soon we will all have some form of web browser on our mobile devices.

After reading an interesting post at UMPCportal, I have to admit that the question whether mobile devices will handle the web in its full PC-like form or a lighter mobile version is a crucial one. If you think about it, we talk about two completely different levels of complexity. I will not pretend to be an expert that knows what will happen, but here is five reasons that the mobile experience will be identical or near-identical to what we now have on our PC:

1. Processing power: as already demonstrated by very light laptops and from what is expected from Atom or equivalent CPU units by Qualcomm or others, there is not going to be a shortage of processing power. It is estimated that CPU units that will appear this year are equivalent to four year old laptop units. In other words, no problem.
2. Screens: people that use and will continue to use mobiles with 2 inch screens tend to stick to SMS messages and voice. Mobile telephone penetration is not equivalent to web penetration.
3. New devices: these are definitely going to offer more screen estate. The question is how large to be practical and how quickly. If a single device can take care of all our voice and data needs, I believe many users would swallow the larger size. If have noticed the designs of MID devices so far, they are all fairly wide, admittedly this needs plenty of vertical scrolling but at least watching conventional web pages is feasible.
4. Easier web page design: no matter what analysts say, making two versions of the same page -for PC and mobile- can be a real pain that will drag down every single person that works in the field. Automatic conversion of normal pages for mobile consumption could be an option but how good would it be and how can it be decided what features to get rid of?
5. Standardisation: having the same page on any machine irrespective of size makes browsing standard, fast and more fun.

So you think I am not a fan of mobile web pages? Wait till my post that lists five reasons mobile websites are necessary!