A mobile Internet user can find friends, take advantage of discount offers and then have dinner or go to a karaoke bar together, thanks to rapidly changing mobile phone Internet technology, Innovation Works Chairman and CEO Kai-Fu Lee said.

The user may also find old friends on the Internet and meet new friends via social networking sites (SNS) and instant messaging (IM) services "all thanks to the mobile Internet connecting each people together," Lee said in a speech April 22 at the Research Annual Forum in Beijing.

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Mobile technology is more than just mobile phones and smartphones. It also embraces handheld gaming and media devices, Netbooks, laptops, electronic book readers, Internet tablets and car electronics that can access the mobile Internet for video, entertainment, games, MP3 music, and wireless applications, Morgan Stanley said in its Mobile Internet Report published in December 2009.

Mobile Internet technology and platforms are ramping up faster than desktop Internet did, and will be bigger than most think, Morgan Stanley said in its report.

IResearch Consulting Group (IResearch) said mobile Internet trade revenue rose to 6.4 billion yuan ($980 million) in the first quarter in its quarterly research report. That's 23 percent more than the previous quarter's 52.4 billion yuan in revenue, and up 43.4 percent from one year earlier.

Lee said mobile Internet in China is moving from the stage of technical tools development to entertainment and social networking.

Morgan Stanley defined mobile Internet development in three stages: infrastructure, platforms, and applications/services/content.

In the infrastructure stage, consumer usage of wireless data grows and consumers demand more from wireless devices. Companies seize opportunities to serve the needs of increasingly empowered mobile users. In the platforms stage, three platforms are emerging: SNS, mobile and the Web. Finally, in the applications/services/content stage, creating new Web-based applications to best serve consumers might be occurring at the fastest pace in history.

Without infrastructures, the mobile Internet "is not going to be affordable enough, so it is a must to have an easy-to-use explorer and some simple news applications, and these have been realized now," Lee said.

Asked by a reporter from chinadaily.com.cn about challenges ahead, Li Xiang, executive vice-president of Shengtuo Media Group, said it’s more than about quickly inserting new content.

"To simply put something on the mobile Internet as a medium will not have much attractiveness," Li said.

Lee agreed. "Users need (long-term) fufillment from entertainment and socializing for a period of time, since Chinese mobile Internet users are still very young," Lee said in his speech.

Zhang Fulian, CEO of LMobile Media Technology Co Ltd , said users "do not tend to use applications for fees, so the free applications are the best bet" at the earlier stage of mobile Internet in China.

"Application developers should take in profits from the market as commercial returns and business support, and the market needs excellent developers to keep launching applications," said Zhang,

Value-added services accounted for 55.6 percent of the country's mobile Internet sales revenue in the first quarter this year, followed by mobile e-commerce at 24.6 percent and cell phone games at 13.7 percent, according to IResearch's data.