Mike Rowehl: This is Mobility

Russ pinged me yesterday about the oft rumoured iPhone, it’s also come across #mobitopia in a few forms. The hot issue Russ has been tracking is “will the iPhone include a standards compliant mobile web browser?” Which if the device sells in big numbers could have a significant impact on the regrowing mobile web.

I’m not as overall concerned about it. Sure, if the iPhone does arrive, and it doesn’t have a mobile web browser that groks “standard mobile web markup” (whatever that means) it will definitely set the mobile web back some. However I think the mobile web is going to happen no matter what, so I’m not really all that concerned about the blow to the current effort that Apple could provide. They might shift the market away from the standards that are out there now, but meh, I’m not all that concerned about that part. So we use some new standards and technologies, mobile life goes on.

I think it is important to pay attention overall to what it means to build an ecosystem like that of the wired web. There were efforts all along the evolution of the web to try to turn it from an open platform into an environment more tightly controlled by one vendor or technology. The ISPs have tried to take it over, the browser makers tried to embrace and extend it, tools and technology vendors attempted to get themselves declared the de-facto next generation standard.

Why did none of those things work? Because people were building compelling and complete applications with the technology that was already there, and it wasn’t worth the pain of tying yourself to a proprietary standard (or for some people it was impossible to access) in order to access any of the other stuff. Build good applications on the open stuff and it’s not going to get subverted. Try to defend the open stuff because of some moral or theoretical ideology and the market will blow right past you. The customers will flow to the folks who are delivering them what they want. Period.

So if you want the mobile web to continue to roll on the way it is, find and build those compelling and necessary applications. The applications that Kelly Goto would call addictive. The applications and services that keep people pulling their phones out of their pockets over and over because they want to.

If Apple manages to change the direction of the mobile web by not including a decent browser on their phone that is the market speaking. The phone would not sell well without a browser if that’s what people cared about. I’ve been ignoring the issue pretty much as a whole so that I can concentrate on trying to help people who are trying to build those apps. If you’re working on one of those apps hopefully you’re doing the same thing.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 9th, 2006 at 12:29 pm and is filed under ThisIsMobility. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.