PlusOne – Marketing Musings » The web – coming to a phone near you

The next big revoloution in web is not going to be tied to computers, but will soon be blasting onto a phone near you – maybe even yours…

One of the main stumbling blocks has been the most websites look really, really bad on a phone’s screen. Opera have tried to address the problem with their mobile phone browser, but it still does not put informatiuon into the logical sort of order needed for effective mobile browsing.

Info via web mobile is popular

One of the world’s most browsed sites is the UK’s BBC which has about 20% of the market share of mobile browsing. Its popularity comes not only from the excellent content (leaving other national broadcasters wallowing in their wake), but also from developing countries where internet access is hard, but mobile access is easy. Consider that of all the international traffic visiting the BBCs WAP pages come from Nigeria (which has a huge mobile market penetration) with 61% followed by South Africa on 19% and Uganda and Jamaica on 7% each.

Does WAP have a future?

I think so. According to the BBCs statistics, page views are growing 100% year on year.

This growth in popularity of WAP is also reflected in the recent launch of the .mobi domain name. MTLD, the organisation behind .mobi, expects 200,000 mobile sites to be registered in the next year. The benefit of visiting a .mobi site from your phone is that you will (hopefully) be assured that the site meets strict guidelines for accessibility – navigation and layout.

Download speed – a poor excuse

However many naysayers still point to slow dowload speeds of content on mobile. The talk of 3G’s download speed of 300kbps being ‘glacially slow’ (despite the average broadband connection still being half that in Asutralian and no doubt in many other countries) indicates a lack of awareness of developers of mobile content of the basic nedd of people using mobile web. Just because music videos can be downloaded onto phones via mobile sites does not mean there are not huge opportunities for other applications.

Take for instance hotel bookings, restaurant guides and tourist information?

Opportunities exist

We have been trying to get retailers interested on online merchandising using simple java-based shopping applications that talk to back-ends and provide a viable shopping experience on your mobile. Everything from ordering your pizza to shopping for essential groceries is already a viable option for those venturing into the WAP world via their mobile.

Another app which has enormous potential on mobile web is Google maps. Only Google – at this stage yes, as theirs is the only application to provide clear and reasonable detail, plus the bourgoining number of ‘mashups’ or maps with overlays of specific information – everything from graphically finding your nearest pub to finding out the best way across Paris on the metro.

All you really need is a big screen

Currently a large number of phones in use have the capacity to access mobile internet. The real need is a big screen and these are becoming increasing common in the form of the clam or flip phone and other large screen phones.

Oh, and cost…

The next stumbling block is the cost of access. While some providers offer specific data plans, many others have a flat fee GPRS access and data download charge. It is the latter which has many cautious of connecting to the internet on mobile. My own experience when looking at local radar images from the Australian Bureau of Meterology sees a plethora of unwanted graphics and menu options loading, before the non-optimised map is displayed.

Challenges and opportunities

So the challenge and equally large opportunity exists at this time. The challenge for content providers to get their act together and provide useful information for mobile consumers and the opportunity for developers to get out there and help devise the information architecture in a way that the content can be presented quickly and effectively, regardless of 3G or fastewr access being available.

If you have experience in this field drop a line via comments…