There’s an interesting post today over at Techcrunch entitled “Why the UK can become the global hub for mobile“, talking about the UK’s potential for becoming a mobile technology pioneer – thanks to an established userbase and some gifted startups:

The UK mobile market is a great place to launch mobile 2.0 startups; all five national network operators are offering 3G services, and faster 3.5G HSDPA networks are being widely rolled out. There are already over 15m 3G subs, around 25% of all mobile connections. Believe it or not, UK operators have been much quicker than those in the US, and much of Europe, to enable and support access to third party mobile internet sites.

It goes on to list some of the great mobile startups in the UK – many of which operate in and around an area of London called Silicon Roundabout. Having met some of the guys involved in the industry at events like Mobile Geeks of London, I got a real sense that there are lots of inventive people coming up with some great ideas. This is particularly with the explosion in 3G and mobile internet (something that hasn’t gone amiss by Ofcom, who today are talking about a “surge” in mobile broadband), which has vastly opened up the possibilities for mobile applications.

Yet with all this good news and signs of promise there’s one setback today. Twitter have announced they will no longer be sending updates via SMS to mobiles as the cost is too high (up to $1,000 per user per year). This is a shame and a real setback – even though Twitter is US-based, it is enormously popular in the UK and many of the same people involved in cutting-edge mobile technology use it. While I don’t think this will seriously impact Twitter’s popularity – and it might open up a niche for a service that does operate via SMS in the UK – it is still a shame that it’s had to take a backward step while there’s so much mobile innovation in the UK.