iPhone vs Mobile web

Sue the Min­is­ter for Pod­cast­ing has nom­in­ated me as Min­is­ter for Mobiles and har­assed me ;-) to com­ment of the iPhone vs Mobile Web art­icle from Read/Write Web. Which is based on Forrester’s report The Mobile Web Versus The Web On An iPhone: iPhone Wins In A Blo­wout. Being unwill­ing to pay $50US for a 5 page US cent­ric report, I will have to base my com­ments on the Read/Write Web art­icle and the small snip­pet that is avail­able free from the For­res­ter website.

Accord­ing to Forrester:

“we believe that the iPhone sig­nals the begin­ning of the end for the mobile Web as we know it today: Stripped-down sites crammed onto the small screens of devices meant for phoning, not brows­ing, will become a thing of the past.”

Which is a fairly bold state­ment, until you start look at the mater­ial used by For­res­ter to backup their con­clu­sions. For example:

“Basic mobile phone — Usab­il­ity — small screen, small but­tons, lim­ited selec­tion of sites, lin­ear navigation”

This may be true of a basic $100 mobile phone using the default browser if it had one. But the iPhone is not a $100 phone, but com­pared to a sim­ilar priced mod­ern phone, say my Dopod 838pro, which has:

Dopod — Usab­il­ity — medium sized screen 320x240px, phys­ical qwerty key­board, scroll­wheel, but­tons, touch­screen, large selec­tion of sites, dir­ect manipulation.

The screen is smal­ler than the iPhone (half the num­ber of pixels, but only 20% less screen size), but the Dopod prob­ably wins on input and the other two are identical.

If you wanted to add a couple of other com­par­is­ons, how about net­work con­nectiv­ity (ok it is unfair I use Aus­tralia as an example and we have 2nd world mobile tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions infra­struc­ture com­pared to the US’s third world quaility).

iPhone — Con­nectiv­ity: Only one ser­vice pro­vider, 10% of the speed and prob­ably 3x the cost of a cheaper 3G alternative.

Dopod 838Pro (or an Nokia N series) — Fea­tures: expand­able memory, numer­ous third party web applic­a­tions includ­ing Skype, remov­able battery.

Ser­i­ously, the iPhone is not quantum leap for­ward in mobile phones. It is a for­ward step, with a lar­ger screen size and improved inter­face design.

Will it end the mobile web as we know it, not in my opin­ion, prob­ably the exact oppos­ite, it will increase the demand and use of the mobile web. There is now close to a mil­lion iPhone own­ers in the most influ­en­tial mar­ket in the world, with in the­ory unlim­ited access but slow con­nec­tion speed. How will the people use their iPhone on the web and what ser­vices will they demand.

I don’t believe people will want to use the zoom fea­ture of browsers, be it Safari, Opera Mobile or Microsoft Deep­fish to view or nav­ig­ate full size web sites on a 3.5” screen. Instead I believe they will choose mobile spe­cific sites that load quickly, are action based and are usable for small screen and lim­ited controls.

Why because unlike the people behind the For­res­ter report, I have been using the real mobile web reg­u­larly for the over six months, read­ing how people around the world (not just the US) use the mobile web as well as watch­ing people use the mobile web and ask­ing questions.

Watch­ing people has given me con­fid­ence in the future of the mobile web. On the bus ride home tonight I was the only one using a laptop but a least 20 of my fel­low 40 pas­sen­gers was using their mobile phones for most of the 30 minute trip. I don’t know how many were surf­ing the web, read­ing email, play­ing games, send­ing or receiv­ing texts or just listen­ing to music. But they were using their mobile phones to enter­tain, com­mu­nic­ate and inform them­selves and as the mobile web becomes more avail­able through cheaper plans and inex­pens­ive hand­sets it has got a strong future.

tagged mobile web iPhone vs Mobile Web iPhone

This entry was posted on Friday, August 10th, 2007 at 11:05 pm and is filed under mobile web . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.