Is The Mobile Web Humpty-Dumpty?
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Zec points to an interesting item by Information Week on Google’s Mobile User Experience Strategy, which was the subject at a meeting of the New York City chapter of the Usability Professionals Association.
Google user experience designer Leland Rechis said, bluntly, that the mobile Web is Balkanized, “The Pangaea of the Web is gone.” And don’t expect this to change anytime soon, either. Thanks to carrier portals and off portal applications, there is no one mobile standard to develop for.
In the mobile world developers have to be prepared to optimize for different devices, browsers, languages, carriers, countries and cultures.
It Won’t Go Back Together Again
For those who haven’t heard about Pangaea, that’s the view that all Earth’s continents were originally connected and have separated through tectonic plate action. Perhaps that resonates with the other Google PhDs but for most of us I think Humpty Dumpty provides a better simile. You remember the rhyme:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
Some may resist but just check out a New York Times item on Big Money in Little Screens:
“The biggest growth areas are clearly going to be in the mobile space,” Eric E. Schmidt, chief executive of Google, said when asked about new opportunities at a conference here this week. In case his point wasn’t clear, Mr. Schmidt drove it home: “Mobile, mobile, mobile.”
With everyone fighting over their piece of the egg, who cares about putting it back together?
Tags: Mobile Web, Pangaea, Humpty Dumpty
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April 26th, 2007 at 4:05 am
Hi Barry
I note that Google’s Eric E. Schimdt drove it home with “mobile,mobile,mobile” but how do you think the market is going to take to this especially the small SME’s… I’ve got their interest here in the UK but nothing much more than that. I’m wondering if there are any figures on web surfing with mobile phone/cell phone users… that might help close some clients here who are still debating the benefits here in the UK….
Daz
April 26th, 2007 at 4:28 am
Hi Daz. I don’t think it’s easy for a SME to invest the effort as yet given the chaotic state of the mobile web. The figures seem to show that there’s not too much surfing at the moment. What there is comes largely from the 20 to 35 year olds rather surprisingly.
I think it could be possible for a SME to do something interesting. Such a SME would likely be in a fairly large metropolis where local search is important. I’ll try to put my thoughts down in a near-future blog post
April 26th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Thanks Barry. I look forward to the post. I’ll keep you informed as to client opinion over here in the UK with regards to mobile web if you want.
Daz