Last week, open source technologist and friend of mine, Erik Jacobs, wrote a post calling the mobile web an aging dinosaur. He cited faster networks, access to the full web and UMPC (Ultra-Mobile PC) class devices such as the iPhone as the reason for the mobile web’s impending doom and destruction.
Much of his argument is true. The mobile web is evolving at an incredibly rapid pace due in large part to the iPhone’s superior web-browsing ability. However, I contend that no matter how much closer to the full web experience that we can come to on a hand-held device, that there will still be a need for developers to create mobile experiences for their desktop web applications.
Let’s take a look at mobile web components that need to evolve or die.
- Handsets: Users are coming to expect more from their smartphones. The iPhone applications that must be installed are the cutting edge ones that use the built-in GPS, stream media or keep users connected via IM or email. If handset makers lose their development community to a more open handset, they lose these cutting edge tools.
- Networks: Just like the evolution of home ISP’s, mobile web users are devouring an ever-increasing amount of information and they want it fast. Now the race is on to make mobile data networks both faster and cheaper.
- Protocols: WML and WAP are so old news. Users want better mobile experiences and full html and ajax.
- Browsers: Most mobile web browsers provide weak javascript/ ajax support and no flash whatsoever. Mobile Safari has started to put pressure on other browsers, but they haven’t solved everything quite yet.
However, there’s one factor that makes the mobile web worthwhile and that isn’t likely to change in the near future: the input device. While PDA manufacturers have tried for years to allow us to navigate tiny screens with an even smaller stylus, the index finger is the input device of choice for the mobile web and I don’t see a mobile mouse being the future of the web.
This means that mobile web developers need to follow in the tracks of iPhone web developers and start making their interfaces touch-friendly. This means thick rows and large buttons with large text. This seems second nature for iPhone web surfers, but not for many mobile web designers that are still creating text based interfaces and little more.
The other question is whether touch-friendly interfaces could become the standard for the desktop web? While it could happen, I think the keyboard and mouse are fairly well ingrained in our desktop web usage patterns and are likely to stay there. Further, with the vast difference in screen size, a touch-friendly desktop web site might overload the mobile user with information.
Either way, I think it’s an exciting time to be in the mobile web. Since it’s gaining so much attention and has doubled in users in the last year, I think we’re going to see some serious innovation in the mobile web space in the next 12-18 months. Only time will tell if it flourished or merges back into the overall web, but if it’s the latter, I just might have to find something else to write about!
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Mobile web is still just beginning. We now see phones as small computers. The computer manufacturers have just re-discovered that making small computers are really popular - i.e. eeepc and all that now follow.
There will always be a need for people to browse for inportant information while away from their primary computer. I think it is essential that website developers and marketeers start addressing the mobile channel - before it passes them by. To our dotcom site, we get just under 3% of our total traffic from mobile devices. We detect them using handsetdetection.com and then customise the view based on phone, keyboard, touch screen, ultramobile pc etc. (the CMS we use supports multi templating).
We never realised how many people visited our site from a blackberry until we started down this path.