Resumen del artículo: en la carrera de los teléfonos inteligentes que se ha iniciado realmente con el iPhone, algunos jugadores inteligentes están tomando posiciones de privilegio. Los medios locales, incluidas algunas telefónicas de menor tamaño, se juegan demasiado como para no comenzar a explorar las posibilidades del nuevo medio.
The mobile internet is a rapidly evolving force; even more so now that the iPhone has opened the smart phone race. An important factor will ensure this race be a long-lasting one: the operating systems of phones are opening up, as I mentioned in a recent post, and the transformational force of thousands of developers will be felt in the future. To use a recent example, as with mush ups data from different sources have been combined into a single integrated tool, developers will explore the different technologies contained in a smart phone, not least the multi-touch technology also introduced by Apple, and come up with new and unimaginable proposals. But now that the race has officially started, who is well positioned to benefit from the mobile revolution and why? Once again, what do consumers really want from their mobile web use?
Recent surveys of mobile users and tracking of sites used by mobile customers show distinct patterns. It seems there are definite differences in how we use the internet on weekends as compared to weekdays and in how we use our PCs compared to mobiles. Business Week coined the phrase “weekend web” to differentiate weekday and weekend use. While the weekday surfing from PCs or home based computers included searches that were wide and far reaching in their scope, the weekend is more limited in its variety of sites. Weekend searches, and specifically those from mobile phones, could be grouped into a smaller range of categories – weather, entertainment, games and music. Some of the top sites included Craigslist, eBay, weather channels and Mapquest. Apart from examining these mobile sites or from entering these categories, companies can try to find out how these sites manage to offer relevant answer to users. Well...that research is equivalent to answering in which way the mobile is a different medium from the PC.
The Indian Reliance ADA Group is just one of those companies to keep an eye on. Originally coming from the entertainment arena (Bollywood, where 1000 films are produced per year!) the company owns, among many other companies, a major wireless operator in India (yes, that country with almost 300 million subscribers!) and is developing an entertainment eco-system by acquiring projects that produce games and aggregate digital content for cell phones. As a matter of fact, it bought the rights to develop mobile games featuring the Manchester United. The fact is that venture capitalists around the globe are funnelling money into any company working to break the next big concept or idea for mobile phone entertainment.
Other companies, such as Bamboo Media Casting, are focusing their efforts on improving the deliverable as well as the content. Establishing what is essentially a DVR for the phone, the company is working to deliver content rich media to subscribers during off-peak hours. This content – video clips, sports highlights, even TV previews – is stored in the phone’s memory and can be played back whenever convenient to the subscriber. Content can be scheduled daily or weekly depending on the demand and interest of the user. Wouldn’t local individuals like you and I be ready to subscribe to the local newspaper’s site it the job was done professionally and our choice went well beyond the present ‘yes’ or ‘no’ when subscribing to most news services?
While a standardized system of browsers – similar to that which exists for the web – become the standard for mobile, IBM researchers have developed software called Highlight to let mobile users create slimmed down versions of web pages for mobile phone use. Users are able to create their own versions of websites by eliminating excess steps and focusing only on steps required. The process is great for shopping, map searches and other on the run jobs that demand fast results. Mobile site managers and developers can learn from the IBM experience and keep in mind the user goals in accessing their site. Presentation is less important than delivering real results: for many developers using large graphics, pop ups and scripting, a re-thinking of what web pages should be about is necessary. Among the web sites who seem to be doing this successfully are Amazon mobile; CNN mobile; Facebook; eBay; Google; Microsoft live; MSNBC; and Wapedia (Wikipedia in mobile). These companies provide information consumers want on the go in a format easy to use and providing immediate feedback.
Local media companies either own or have access to large amounts of contents and vast databases that local users would like to access on the go. While only larger internet players seem to be getting it right at this point in the game, there is nothing that prohibits smart local players from starting to play with the new toy. When I say local media companies I also think of smaller telcos.
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