Let's
look
into the future of the Mobile Web, where’s it’s
headed, or better yet, where it’s supposed to be
headed…
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In
May 2005, the W3C, the leading consortium for the World Wide Web,
announced the launch of the Mobile Web Initiative (MWI). In the
official press release, W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee recognized that
“mobile access to the Web has been a second class experience
for far too long.” He continues, |
“MWI recognizes
the mobile device as a first class participant, and will produce
materials to help developers make the mobile Web experience
worthwhile.” It may be too early to tell, but with sponsoring
organizations such as Nokia, Ericsson, France Telecom, Vodafone, and
NTT DoCoMo on board, there’s hope the initiative toward a
more worthwhile mobile web will be a unified one.
But unity could inevitably come at the expense of carriers and device
manufacturers, who ultimately control the mobile web user experience.
If unity, even “standards”, negatively impact the
bottom line, we expect W3C’s MWI will be virtually powerless
against those who really write the rules — the carriers and
manufacturers.
However, if we learned only one thing from the “desktop
web” standards movement in recent years, it’s that
even the most behemoth organizations listen if the wheel squeaks loudly
enough. And where listening ears are found, there lies also the
potential for change.
Some of the more encouraging signs of mobile design and development:
- There are three
times as many mobile phones as PCs worldwide, and that gap
doesn’t show any signs of decreasing
- Virtually all
phones on the market today are web-enabled
- Google maintains a
separate index for “true” mobile-friendly sites,
Google Mobile
- Mobile startups
are currently experiencing large amounts of investment dollars
- Location-based
services, such as GPS and RFID technologies, are right around the
corner, providing local context to web content
We know mobile users are already accessing the web on their devices,
and we can safely bet they’ll continue to do so. The question
then becomes, “How do we design for the mobile
web?” A superb question, indeed, that is now being answered
by new waves of designers and developers.
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