Nexus One & Evernote: via Johan Larsson's photostream.
Recently I’ve been spending lots (I mean LOTS) of time thinking about what many web-heads call “the mobile web“, and the battle that is taking place among companies to get the largest market share of customers to adopt various goods and services in the mobile web’s early days.
I first started to think about this around the time that the Nexus One (AKA the Google phone) hit the market, and Tim O’Rielly wrote a post on O’Reilly Radar about how the Nexus One stacked up against the iPhone in what O’Reilly called “the war for the [mobile] web“.
A short time later I read another post by web superstarCory Doctorow. Doctorow’s writing focused on how the Nexus One, and the mobile web made his life easier / better during a book tour for his most recent novel For The Win.
Both Doctorow and O’Reilly have become powerhouses in / on the web because they have the uncanny ability to see and articulate trends of importance, i.e. when they are on both publicly thinking about a topic, I think it is a good idea to pause, take note, and start thinking about it as well.
To help me organize my own thoughts I want to write a series of posts about the mobile web. This is the first post in that series, and it has to do with the assumptions I’m working from as I think (and now blog about) the mobile web. Those assumptions are…
1. The mobile web is different from the regular web. As evidenced by: many sites creating “mobile” versions of themselves to display their content and the growing number of users of “mobile” based applications which rely on the web (Example: FourSquare).
a. The Mobile web is accessed ON THE GO more often than not via “smartphones” (as opposed to “dumbphones“).
b. The Mobile Web is slower than the regular web. This is why the mobile versions of sites are more “light weight” than the full version that people would normally access from their desktop, laptop, or other more traditional computer.
c. Non-phone mobile devices (like the iPad) have started to pop up, and they are built around giving customers access to the mobile web in ways that a small smartphone device can’t. I believe these devices, like their smartphone counterparts, will become more prevalent as time goes on.
d. As smartphones and other devices that are built around providing access to the mobile web become more prevalent the mobile web will become more imporant.
2. There are two major players in the hardware and software battles for the mobile web, and a third major player may be poised to emerge soon. Those players are…
a. Apple has joined in the hardware (iPhone and iPad) and software (iOS) battle for the mobile web. As a company Apple attempts to exert as much control over the ways in which their customers interact with the mobile web.
b. Google has joined in the software battle (Android), but their experiment with hardware (Nexus One) must not have worked out because Google will no longer be selling hardware. (Which is a shame… being able to buy an unlocked Android phone was something that I think gave lots of power to consumers, so I’m sorry to see that it will soon come to an end).
c. Microsoft is about to enter the software battle with Windows Phone 7 (Engadget has a in depth review so does Gizmodo).
3. Providing customers with the mobile web is a collaboration between companies that make hardware (Apple / HTC / Motorola / etc), companies that make software (Apple / Google / Microsoft), and companies that provide telecommunications infrastructure (in the United States Verizon / AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint).
a. The creators of hardware, software have very different goals / business plans than the telecommunications infrastructure providers do.
b. However, despite these different goals / business plans these companies (at least for now) need to work in concert in order to provide the mobile web to their shared customer bases.
c. Be that as it may, these companies don’t always like the fact that they have to be bedfellows.
Tags: AndroidWindows, assumptions, at&t, cellphones, Cory Doctorow, dumb phones, FourSquare, Gizmodo, GoogleEngadget, HTC, iOS, iPad, iphone, Location based, Microsoft, mobile, mobile web, Motorola, Neil Gorman, nexus one, smartphones, Sprint, t-mobile, Tim O'Rielly, verizon
My only issue on this post is the bit about the Nexus One. As you know, I own one, and part of my original impetus to get one was the issue of freedom to switch to another carrier. In the case of T-Mobile customers like me, this doesn’t really empower much of anything except the ability to switch out of a contract plan because the version is only compatible with T-Mobile’s 3G bands.
I’m not sure what the situation is with AT&T compatible Nexus Ones.
That being said, it’s a great phone, and Google’s discontinuation of it is unfortunate and curious. It’s not the phone that has failed; it’s their own online store that did. I don’t see why they can’t have carriers start selling it and keep the phone in the marketplace where it deserves to be.