Mobile Devices, Smart Phones and the rise of the Mobile Web

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I’ve recently found myself discussing more and more about the increasingly important of mobile as a preferred device.

IDC recently released a report on world-wide smartphone growth and last year MIT Technology Review released a report on how The Mobile Device Is Becoming Humankind's Primary Tool.

Both highlight how the take up, usage patterns and always connected capabilities make it a perfect tool, especially as Mobiles are moving from the ear to the hand.

Additionally the view of slavish adherence to a single device and native apps has loosened to capture both native apps and designing for the mobile web.

This is nicely covered in the article Mobile Apps are Dead. Long Live the Mobile Web and Mobile Web vs Native App: Give It a Rest.

I suspect that in the Gulf data usage and smartphone take up is growing at a far greater rate than most areas which presents a great opportunity to companies.

  • The bad news is that most customers largely don’t know how to start but they do know that they need to start now.
  • The good news is that you don’t have to commit to an specific app (android, blackberry, apple, win7) per se but to modern smartphones, which are becoming ubiquitous , which means that by simply designing for the mobile web you are able to reach them.
  • The even better news is that SP2010 and FSIS you have great tools for to power great customer experiences on the mobile (including out of the box support for mobile UI in sp2010) just go to www.181.bh on your mobile for a simple, elegant yet powerful experience.

There are some best practises around designing for the mobile, both from a business and a technology point of view, which I’ll leave for another post.