an update on my earlier mobile 2.0 entry — how to make this mobile web work

looking around the web at stories about the mobile internet and the mobile web, mobile 1.0, wap, mobile 2.0 one thing that strikes me is how people are getting excited with every change in technology, every increase in bandwidth will clearly lead to a new mobile web, to increased adoption. but let’s be honest here, it hasn’t. take a look at this the wireless report story titled High prices for mobile content hurting consumer adoption. the story quotes an IDC report:

In addition, almost 75% of the study’s respondents didn’t use any non-messaging data services during the third quarter of this year.

so way more than half of this mobile user group (and if i understand it correctly the respondents were 18- to 24-year-olds) use their mobile phone for calls and sms. this is pretty much exactly what they used 10 years ago. i don’t have data to back this up, but i am fairly certain that even the attractive business user market that uses so probably much more data traffic than the 18 to 24 year-olds uses data traffic for their blackberry devices and there probably dominantly for emails (sending and receiving) and calendaring. that doesn’t leave a lot for mobile internet browsing. but is this really this surprising? and here is why:

1. content is still considered to be carrier driven (just look at the recent announcement that youtube will be available exclusively via verizon.
2. content is still not created exclusively for the mobile phone. just saying that you can now see the same content on your mobile phone that you could see on a pc web browser does not work. and the at&t ad with people watching a football game on a tv, computer and mobile phone is just ridiculous because it shows how little the company understands on packaging content, all three screens in that ad offer exactly the same tv pictures (this is by the way the reason carriers should not be the portal for content — they just don’t get content). content needs to be channel focused.
3. mobile phones have developed over the years, but let’s be clear about one thing, a mobile phone will always have a smaller screen than a laptop, than a pc, and than a tv. plus, the input of text and any kind of information will always be more difficult on a mobile phone than compared with a laptop or pc.

so with this in mind, let’s move forward and just forget the last six years, which were pretty much wasted by the mobile phone industry.

the chances that mobile phone users will just browse around like they do on pcs is less likely because of the situation they are in (on the go) and because of the interface they are using (small and not that easy to navigate). plus, the screen offers only little bits of information at a time. this can actually have two results
1. less graphics and more text … so no big pictures that require scrolling
2. more graphics and less text … increased use of icons that do not take up a lot of space, but replace words.

a focus has to be on in the moment gratification for the user. this means that apps and services should be triggered by location, by interaction, by action (i take a picture of a barcode should provide me with a list of services that i can access via the net for example). ok, this might not sound easy, but we didn’t just plaster newspaper content on the internet to make it work, no we actually had to think and invent the web medium.

well, these are some of my thoughts on where the industry has to go before we can even think of mobile 2.0