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TechnoratiCellphone applications today are often focused on displaying a simplified web page. Yet, web pages are more or less exclusively designed only considering the restrains of a regular work station.
This is perhaps one most important challenge in future cellphone solutions and in many ways this is a philosophical challenge rather than a technological challenge. Nevertheless, I will not try to fully address the challenge in this blog post, but indicate what I believe are the key elements of it and sketch the solution.
Instead, I will focus on the restrictions of a cellphone application in an emerging market and/or developing country even though it might be applied to the developed markets. We start by looking at some of the differences between the two platforms.
Most cellphones have small screens. (Oh yes, they have.) That means that you have very limited space to present the content. Very few solutions so far have been able to present content in an adequate and appealing way on these screens. The difference in the (graphical) presentation the content between a cellphone and a normal workstation is therefore huge for most content.
For instance, considering the mouse/touchpad of a normal laptop makes the user interaction much simpler than on a cellphone, as the “keyboard” is small. Naturally the user interaction with a cellphone, i.e. texting, is very much linked to how used you are to it. Clearly, in Asia, Africa and Europe people are much more used to it than they are in the US. Thus a clear distinction between possible cellphone applications in these regions has to be made.
Cellular networks are also still lagging in bandwidth and the data plans in cellular networks are continuing to be fairly expensive. Both these factors are limiting the amount of data that being sent to and from a cellphone.
What is the proper solution?
For me the obvious solution is to display an extract of information on the cellular platform, but combine that with the proper platform on the web where the full version can be seen. Think of either trailer or an article abstract. If you like the trailer, you want to see more. However in many cases an abstract of an article is enough.
What are the techniques to use?
For emerging countries the right choices are SMS and MMS. In some cases WAP might be an alternative, but in most cases the two first choices are enough. Those techniques fulfill the criteria as presented above. They are simple to use. They are already known to the user. They have a low entry barrier and exist in almost all cellphones out there. Even better, they are normally very cheap.
The available applications in this field usually lack the corresponding web application that completes the content delivered to the cellphone. You have to provide the user with the full version of the content, and this makes even better sense as it will boost the PC-market and need of bandwidth for workstations in those regions.
I think that in many cases these techniques, even though well-known, are underrated. Especially since the emphasis primarily have been to either deliver or submit content via these, but also lacking the proper backbone on the web to support them. Using these techniques to both send and retrieve data and combine them with a web application would be very powerful. Especially when combined with the proper business model and strategic partnerships.
The future cellphone applications in emerging markets and the developing world will need to or to be more direct should address this challenge.
Originally posted on http://inthefieldonline.net/blog
WAP vs. SMS and MMS
Erik, nice to see WAP getting a mention in the big mobile phone/communication debate. With SMS storming ahead, both MMS and to a greater extent WAP have both been firmly in the back seat. There are a number of reasons for this - some of which you touch on in your post. Key ones as far as I'm concerned are:
1. WAP is still recovering from the earlier over-hyped days when it was billed as the "mobile internet". As far as the users understood it, it was never going to be this, and they turned their noses up when expectations fell very short. Perhaps "mobile teletext" would have been a better label
2. Web developers have the luxury of working to standards - both hardware and software. However, each mobile manufacturer has its own idea of screen size and resolution, and this varies even from model to model. It is harder developing a mobile internet site when you don't know what the page is going to be read on (device recognition can help solve this, but it adds more work). In addition, WML (the mobile phone version of HTML) seems to behave differently on different phones, another problem. And operator portals often use their own version of WML. Vodafone live! for example, uses PML (Partner Markup Language) which doesn't meet many of the 'standards'. But then big players like Vodafone can get away with this kind of behaviour
3. Browsing and searching is a struggle. Although big players such as Google are beginning to develop nore serious WAP search tools, have you ever tried looking for something on your phone? The lack of dedicated WAP sites, and the problems many phones have rendering websites on small displays, makes it all rather painful
4. The lack of a decent input device is also an issue. In the early days of SMS this was also seen as a problem, but has been overcome. However, texts are relatively short and text-speak has allowed words to be abbreviated to the extreme. Doing this would be a major issue with WAP, and would complicate searching
5. You know where you are with a text, or picture message. 10 pence or 10 cents or whatever. Trying to work out how much it's going to cost to browse a few pages of a WAP site is a little tricker since it's based on page weight in most cases (although some operators charge by the minute)
6. User education, particularly in using their phones to access the mobile internet, can be an issue. Settings can be sent via the operators website, but if it's too difficult or time consuming to do then users won't bother, unless they can see real benefit
7. Access speeds. Despite the emergence of GPRS and 3G, it can still be a little painful waiting for pages to download. Although users seem to be a little more tolerant with the internet, they appear to be less so with their mobiles
Despite these difficulties and issues - many of which can be overcome with some creative thinking - WAP still has a big part to play in the SMS and MMS mix. The quantity of information which can be delivered is considerably higher than SMS, and the cost usually much lower. Don't be surprised to see more happening in this area over the coming months and years...
For a good case study of the kinds of things possible through WAP see www.kiwanja.net/wildlive!.htm – this used a combined web and WAP approach, something discussed by Erik in his blog.
Another project I’ve been working on over the past year is Global Gorillaz. The website is at www.globalgorillaz.com and there’s a fledgling WAP site (still under development and a little unsteady on its feet) which you can see if you point your phone browser to http://wap.gogorillaz.net. Sadly stalled due to funding issues.