Selling anything to mobile operators is hard at the best of times, competition for their attention, catering for operator whims and the changing tide of handsets reduces the probability of success. Therefore, when I saw the pulling down of 3’s walled garden and now the provision of ‘all you can eat’ data packages, I thought utopia had arrived for the mobile services developer. But has it?
The evolution of the mobile web/services has followed that of the internet, currently tracking about 10 years behind. The key elements in the development of the internet based services were, in order of importance, stable OS, highly compatible browser, subscription broadband, ability to search for content across the web and finally the ability to pay for goods and services securely.
In the mobile world these elements are not in place to the same standard as the internet and therefore we see a number of new entrants.
Mobile operating systems are fragmented with the majority of phones using proprietary solutions. Symbian, Microsoft Mobile and Linux account for such a small amount (approx. 2%) of the total shipments that the open OS is still yet to make it self felt. This is important for many reasons but the major one is the ability to provide and control processing power to multiple applications, thus allowing feature rich content and services. However, the industry has two options, reduce the expensive of the open OS or finally Standardize the implementation of J2ME across all manufacturers.
The mobile browser has its own problems. For every phone model we have up to 10 browser versions and identities. The capability to read standard xhtml on the mass market phones is so fragmented that and entire industry is required to enable it the general public to browse. The best solution currently comes from Opera and allows a browser to work across multiple phones and manufacturers. Technologies such an AJAX and Widgets are playing an important part in moving the functionality forward.
The ability to search the mobile web is also in its infancy. Google has entered the market with a mobile version which provides results based on IP address of the user. However, what is required is a collaborative effort to geo-locate the services offered by the webmaster with that of the user’s location, enabling a ‘find’ service. In other words we need truthful webmasters and free/cheaper location services from the mobile operators. This requires an update in the business model used by the web and Google is leading this with their mobile network alliances and applications.
Payment via mobile is currently centered on premium rate SMS. The major issues with this are the granularity of payment values and the percentage taken by the mobile operators. If a solution was using PSMS was made available across all operators for payments from 1p to £ 100 and only creamed off 3% then I believe that this would be an instant success. However we are presented with many solutions with varied complexity and security that the end user will never enter this domain without a great deal of incentives. Paypal (US) accounts for around 25% of online transactions and has just lunched its own mobile solution. The public has a great deal of trust in Paypal and therefore this may be the default solution we have all been waiting for.
The payment solution is critical for the growth of mobile services as the relationship between the service/content provider and end user needs to be generated on a trusted solution which can be expanded to numerous suppliers.
All these elements still need to be in place before the sector can successfully move forward. The surprising part is that the solutions may not be coming from those who are in the mobile industry; it is coming from those who gained the customers trust in other industries and see our broken world as an opportunity.