Monday 14th saw the latest Mobile Monday gathering at the Fort York Armoury. Nick Patsiopoulos and Shyam Sheth, from Yahoo! And Google respectively, shared their company’s vision on the future of Mobile Applications. The choice of subject is no coincidence, following one of the most hotly debated topics in the industry – Is the future of mobile applications in native applications or within the browser? Several in depth online discussions have been made on the subject, for instance Dean Bubley and Michael Mace [see also Is the future in browsers or apps? previously on WirelessNorth.ca].
Yahoo’s Blueprint, the core platform for Yahoo!Go v 3.0, seems to be part browser and part native application. The philosophy behind Blueprint’s beta version is breadth over depth, with the intention of accelerating development of applications for the mobile web. Yahoo! Wants to give newbie developers to the mobile medium a standard set of tools, to overcome the hurdles of native application development. In summary, Yahoo!’s pitch to content developers is – you focus on building your data and idea, let us focus on presentment and look’n’feel on the multiple devices and OS’s.
But do I really want to have Yahoo controlling how my application/widget gets displayed? How would I differentiate my content’s user experience from that of the next app, if they all look the same? We all know looks matter – but here everyone is a good looking mannequin (Nick – if you are reading this – please feel free to comment).
Google in contrast, would like to take a more web centric approach, leveraging web tools and conforming them to the mobile space. Who hasn’t heard of Android. Google’s open platform philosophy and web-centric approach is here to stay – add Google Gears Mobile to the growing list of web driven mobile initiatives. Nothing new here, watch a few Android videos on Youtube and you’ll get the point. In summary – the IPhone is here to stay, we will have more iphone like devices, and the browser/web based approach is the way to go.
The most interesting comment in the post presentation discussion, centered around consumers, segmentation and devices. If Google’s and Yahoo’s focus is on the iPhone consumers, where does that leave average, non-sexy device users?
And Shyam made a valid point – the real users of mobile internet and services will be the iPhone (and other high-end device) subscribers. If that is the case, then as a content developer, one should really target the browser and high end device market. Don’t worry that the smaller devices don’t render well or do not have sophisticated browsers, that user is not really looking for a mobile web experience in the first place. And, with the churn in the device market, the average device capability will tend to what is considered higher-end today anyways!
Focussing on the smartphone type user, you are targeting an early adopter – they are the ones who really care enough about content and technology, and will drive the initial traffic to you. The mid-late adopters follow the popularity trends set by the early adopters. If you succeed with them, you have greater chances at mass market adoption (read Seth Godin’s Purple Cow).
But really, all these discussions are academic – if the road (and by road I mean the mobile data ) to the content have high tolls (and by tolls I mean high usage charges) and are blocked by the network operator. To have mobile content take off, mobile data needs to take off – and prices need to get cheaper to make that happen.
The next installement of MobileMonday promises to feature some guest speakers from Japan – the frontrunners in the mobile data and content space. Should be interesting and I hope they talk about how their cheap data rates helped accelerate data usage and drive traffic towards applications.
