The Mobile Web – Dead or Alive?
May 22, 2008 – 10:40 am
(image credit - SFist)
Over the past few weeks and months, there’s been a lot of discussion about the Mobile Web. Russell Beattie set off a lot of conversation with his post about shutting down his company, Mowser, which was a mobile web browser that optimized regular web pages for display on a mobile phone. See comments on it from Readwriteweb, Techcrunch, Mobhappy ; there is a lot of disagreement as to whether the mobile web is dead or just beginning to dominate. Interestingly, the assets of Mowser were sold a few weeks later.
Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley and Mobhappy both think that the mobile phone is going to replace the PC altogether.
Is the mobile web the past, present or future? Well, I think it’s all of those and none of those. Let me explain what I mean.
I think all of the discussion about the mobile web confuses the issue because the mobile web is about 2 things:
1. Devices
2. Context
Devices: Mobile phones, PDAs and smartphones were created to be portable devices and therefore to be used in “mobile” situations, when someone is in between Location A and Location B. Why? The assumption is that there is a more convenient and/or comfortable device to accomplish whatever function at Location A and Location B.
Context: Now here’s where it gets confusing: Let’s talk about 3 features people use mobile devices for:
1. Voice -
A landline phone, until recently, for most people was cheaper, more comfortable and higher quality than one’s cell phone while at home or in the office. Therefore most people use their cell phones in their car, while walking around or at a friend’s house. If at the office or at home, though, they used to mostly opt for their landline phone. Now the quality and price of mobile telephony is such that many people are abandoning landlines at home and/or work and using just their cellphone for all their voice calls. This makes sense as the price, form factor and accessories for cell phones are now almost comparable with landline phones. One can easily see telephony devices converging to a core device (or potentially a module) that people carry around.
2. E-mail -
Mobile email is certainly a killer app for the sale and use of smartphones. RIM has built a $75 billion dollar business on satisfying the need for email on the go. Again, mobile email was designed to be a way to check your email on the go, in between Location A and Location B. It actually still is. It’s just that Location A and B, instead of being solely one’s home and office are now for many people the desk in one’s home and in one’s office. Mobile email devices and software have become good enough so that the couch is now a mobile location for many as far as using their smartphones to check their email there.
However, I have yet to learn of anyone who as abandoned a laptop or desktop computer as their primary device for processing their email. It’s simply just much more efficient to use a full size keyboard and screen and have access to full fledged apps/web for viewing and editing e-mails and attachments.
3. Mobile Web -
Like Voice and E-mail, the mobile web has undergone and will undergo vast improvements since the early days of WAP. The iPhone’s browser and browsing experience is nothing short of a revolution and is demonstrating that there is demand for web browsing on the phone.
However, even more-so than with e-mail, the mobile phone/smartphone/mobile device will not become a replacement for a “fuller” size interaction: now that means computer/laptops screen & keyboard browsing experience. Why? The screen size, speed and input mechanisms for a mobile device will never catch up with what’s capable on a full size computer. Browsing a website on an iPhone pales in comparison with a Macbook Air which pales in comparison to a 24 inch iMac. Contextually, there are three reasons why people might want to use a mobile phone/smartphone to browse the web that I can imagine:
A. Specific piece of info – Phone number, address, stock quote, sports score, mundane fact to prove a friend wrong in an arugument – until the iPhone and other Smartphones, 2 way text messaging via 4INFO or Google SMS was the best way to get this info. Now there are a variety of cool new apps and interfaces (like Tellme’s voice activated application and Google Maps for Mobile) to help people get this info.
B. Boredom – this is the instance where one wishes they were at Location A or Location B where they had their laptop or desktop to play games, surf YouTube, read their RSS feeds or use StumbleUpon. The Airport and doctor’s office waiting rooms come to mind. The iPhone platform and other mobile applications will continue to address this need, the limiting factor here being battery power.
C. Walking (or driving) around, or engaged in some activity, a person sees or hears something that they want to access at Location A or Location B on their computer. Like what? A product they want to research or buy, a movie trailer they want to watch, something they want to recommend to a friend. Why not dive straight into the mobile web right this instant? It will take a lot longer than looking up a specific piece of info, especially on a small screen, and since they’re not bored/waiting around, they just want to beam that tidbit they saw or heard to their computer so they can check it out when they get home. (yup, this is where kwiry comes in….)
What about SMS/texting? This is an example of an application created to take advantage of both mobile devices and mobile contexts. That’s why it’s so successful. SMS takes advantage of the screen size, small keyboard and slow data speeds that frustrate us when trying to use other mobile applications….
Now while computers may get smaller as serious processing power can be crammed into smaller and smaller packages, I think there’s other factors at play, including the interaction with that device. The iPhone’s touch screen is a good first step, but until we have Minority Report-like interaction where the device can be controlled with hand motions and voice and project images into the air, I think the PC is safe…… In terms of mobile browsing specifically, Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Ventures points out that recent innovations on the web (AJAX, large Javascript files, etc.) make the mobile browsing experience worse, not better. These innovations and sites using them are certainly not going away and new ones will continue to take advantage of faster PC computing power and large displays. Thus, the mobile web will be like dog chasing its tail in terms of supplanting the PC -based web.
Wow, this is a long post, huh? Well, let me sum up. Mobile devices will definitely become better at accessing the web and will be good complements to computers. But that’s just it, complements. Are all the investments and hype about the mobile web overblown? I don’t know, I definitely think mobile e-mail is a huge industry, but again, it’s still a complement to computer-based e-mail. So the mobile web can and will grow and prosper but we should all think about it in the proper context…..
Would love to hear other thoughts/perspective in the comments.
Wow, the 
