Monday, July 31, 2006

Mobile Internet vs. Internet

Do you browse the web on your phone, (that is the real web) ? Why do people browse in the first place ? Are they browsing real web sites, filtered web sites for mobile, or just going to their web mail through the mobile browser - in which case it is it really web browsing ?
This is a debate I have regularly with my colleagues at one of the large UK mobile operators... The usual issues of screen size, battery life and poor input method, no address bar or navigation buttons at the top of mobile browsers, lack of plugin support such as active-x controls etc.. all not being present tend towards the mobile internet support argument (where mobile internet sites are tailored for mobile devices ... usually phones). However in each of these cases the issues are being addressed **slowly..**.

.mobi domains has brought these issues up as flavour of the month again.

Having used the Nokia OSS browser for the last 6 months on the E60, N80 and N73 I have noted my own behaviour .... I regularly "graze" - that is I am using the mobile browser to visit websites I normally would visit as if I were at my laptop to get information snack bites (these are real websites n ot mobile variants) ...it's more information gathering from my pre-selected websites than browsing. For example, if I have a few spare minutes at the airport I might catch up on some of my favourite Blog posters new entries .... or go to my Gmail / Hotmail/ Yahoo mail account via the mobile browser (there are much quicker easier ways to get your webmail on the phone - but I still find the web browser method acceptable). There seems to me at least a utility function of browsing in this way - I am after some specific ** persoanlised ** information , I know where and how to get it and the user experience is not great but it's ok and outweighs the "wait until I'm at my PC" issue... (ie. more importantly I can get it whenever I want and wherever I am)...

The scenario above is "Pull" based - I am actively going to get information via the mobile phone browser, pulling the information I'm hoping to get when I have some idle time (unless you are using some kind of Alerting via email service on the web eg. Google Alerts), then we get to "Push" -based services which opens up a whole other debate !... snacksize bits of personalised content being pushed to your phone seems to be one way in the interim to address some of the aforementioned mobile phone browsing issues ...

However, just as I like to know that I carry around ** my total support and social network ** (in my contacts/address book)... that it's with me at all times (until the battery runs out ;)..... I like the idea of having access to the **total web** (not just the mobile web) in my pocket as well...

0 comments: