Fling Media

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

10 Things I Learned at Mobile 2.0

The Mobile 2.0 Conference yesterday was a lot of fun and great day of discussion about the future of mobile. While there was definitely some kinks, it was an excellent first event that I hope it will become an annual one. A big thanks go to Mike Rowehl, Dan Appelquist, Greg Gorman and others for putting this together.

On the flight back, I had a chance to reflect about some of the things that I learned or surprised me about the event.

#1 Mobile 2.0 = The web

The thing that surprised me the most about the event was how much the web was discussed, specially the mobile web. I had anticipated a little discussion about the web throughout the day. Usually when mobile geeks get together they talk about mobile applications, carriers, J2ME midlets, blah blah blah. But yesterday was different.

It was obvious that in the minds of many, Mobile 2.0 is the web. Mobile is already a platform, but the consensus was that leveraging the power of the web, integrating web services into the mobile medium is the future of mobile.

While many of the discussions leaned on the technical, I found it a breath of fresh air to hear so much discussion about the mobile web from the mobile community. Contrast that with the Future of web Apps conference last month, also in San Francisco, mobile was hardly mentioned at all. Seems like we have a disconnect.

#2 The mobile web browser is the next killer app

If Mobile 2.0 is the web, then the mobile web browser is the next killer app. There were many discussions about the future of mobile browsers, their capabilities and the what the future holds.

Of particular concern is how device fragmentation factors into mobile browsers. For example, how can we expect developers to support 30+ different mobile browsers? Luckily both myself and Charles from Opera had a chance to answer this question explaining that simple XHTML Basic code, with simple CSS will render fairly consistently across most modern handsets.

Fellow panelist Chris, from the Mozilla Minimo project felt we will see only a few browsers in the future, Minimo/Mozilla, Opera Mini/Opera, Internet Explorer and Nokia/Apple webkit. While I think that statement is a little too focused on the Smart Phone market and leaves out big players like OpenWave and Access, I do agree that we are beginning to see strong encouragement toward the reduction of mobile browsers. I just don’t think it will be just the “big four.”

#3 Mobile web Applications are the future

Creating mobile web applications instead of software applications is of a lot of interest. The mobile community is really looking at the web 2.0 revolution for inspiration. They see the success of small iterative development cycles and want to apply it to mobile.

Developers seem keen to shift away from the costly mobile applications, that are difficult to get through the mobile service provider gates, require massive testing cycles and can easily miss the mark with users after dumping loads of money into it.

Mobile software has two fundamental problems that mobile web applications solve. First it needs to be loaded on to the handset, either via download to phone from PC or through the mobile service provider. Neither are ideal. Second, software is difficult to update over-the-air (the mobile hardcore would say OTA). Once the software is loaded, that’s it. The user doesn’t receive any of the benefits of minor bug fixes or modest upgrades.

#4 AJAX is the next frontier

There is a lot of focus on AJAX being the next big hurdle to the mobile web experience. Opera, Minimo and the Nokia/Apple browser all support it today, but it still feels like we have a long way to go until we begin to see the rich interaction we’ve become accustom to the past few years on the desktop web.

Again, I saw a speaker bias for Smart Phones and PDAs which most of the attendees tend to own, and not a lot of discussion of when AJAX can be expected on the widely more popular Feature Phones. It is important to understand that your common Feature Phone is three to four times more saturated than higher end Feature Phones.

I expect in 2007 we will see a flurry of announcements focused on AJAX, or AJAX-based web applications on mobile phones. But I think it may not be until 2008 that we see the market saturation of AJAX supported browsers high enough to give it much weight.

#5 Javascript kills battery life

I knew about this one, but not to the degree that was stressed. I mean they really stressed it, like 10 times. Using Javascript on a mobile phone consumes A LOT of power.

Using a AJAX based web application can drain at a rate of 4-5 times your normal power consumption. So unless you are in the habit of carrying around a bunch of extra batteries, like one person suggested, expect to charge your phone every hour or two as a penalty for being on the bleeding edge.

As a side note, there was also a lot of discussion of how accessing the device capabilities like the phone book or files system with Javascript doesn’t work in a consistent way. That better Javascript support on devices, not just with better power performance, but also richer interaction between device and client scripts.

#6 The Mobile User Experience Sucks/Rules/Is Hot!

There was a lot of talk about mobile user experience. The attitudes varied throughout the day, from “the mobile user experience is utterly horrid,” to “look at these cool things you can do,” to “the mobile user experience is the future!”

The polar attitudes toward the mobile user experience was fascinating to observe. It seemed as everyone was treating it like a chicken and the egg scenario, bad input/output of the user experience prevents adoption, but designing a shiny user experience with bells and whistles will bring them in droves.

What was missing was discussion about goals and what people are trying to do with mobile devices. Not too surprising, it was an industry conference after all. It would have been nice to see one person say, “I’ve talked to five people. They told me what they wanted on a mobile device. So we built it.”

#7 Mobile Widgets are the next big thing

There was a lot of discussion about widgets. Nokia’s venture WidSets demoed their widget platform as did SoonR. Hetal from Symbian talked about the advantages of creating small web-enabled applications. And I had a great discussion with Chris at Mozilla about using XUL to create Minimo-based applications like we see with Firefox.

The consensus seems to be that the solution for the mobile web is to create a series of “small webs” targeted at a specific user or task. I couldn’t figure out the problem they were solving was, but the widgets looked cool.

Don’t get me wrong, while I believe that the concept of small network enabled applications is very promising. The mobile industry tends to take promising ideas like this, inflate expectations to unsustainable levels then abandon them at the first sign of trouble or for the next big thing, whichever happens first.

In my mind, the mobile web is here and no one is creating content for it. It is the long bet. Let’s try to get that sorted out first before we try to abstract a layer on top of it.

#8 The Carrier is the new “C” word

I noticed a strong tendency by all who took the podium to avoid uttering the word “Carrier.” Even the European folks rarely used the word “Operators,” the equivalent term used elsewhere in the world to describe mobile service providers.

It was almost as though they didn’t exist for a day. Maybe the attendees preferred to see a future with no mobile service providers at all. I think more likely the case is that everyone has finally figured out that you can’t make a buck if your business relies on carriers. Though the “C” word wasn’t uttered, it still was the 800 lb gorilla in the room.

With so much focus on the mobile web, it became obvious to me that everyone is looking for a way around the carriers. The mobile web looks to be their best shot at the moment.

#9 People abuse the Podium

This has nothing to do with mobile, but it was a big issue of the day for me. Many speakers abused the privilege of taking the podium and speaking to their peers. Rather than discuss their insights into the topic of the panel, they walked us through their product, company numbers or recycled market data, often a year or more old. They gave us nothing to think about, they did not challenge our views or perceptions, nor did we walk away with a beneficial view of the speaker, their content or the company.

Most panelists were invited to give a short overview or introduction before the moderator took to Q&A. Many took 15-20 minutes to painfully walk us through their talking points. multiply that by a panel of four and there is your hour, giving us little time for questions or discussion.

Speaking in front of your peers is a privilege, and should be treated with respect.

Also, don’t even think about doing a presentation unless you’ve read Tufte. Just because you have five minutes doesn’t mean you cram an hour of content into 8 slides. The pinnacle moment of the day was “the conclusion” of two slides with 10 points each.

#10 We are creators not consumers

The highlight of the day was Tony Fish giving an excellent, though very under-appreciated, discussion about Mobile web 2.0. He provided a variety of well spoken points about the trends, needs and goals of people. Things like user-generated content, mash-ups, etc are not new concepts, but have been around for hundreds of years. He not only provided historical context, but excellently applied current trends to the mobile web.

The most memorable moment was when he forwarded the theory that we are not consumers at all, but creators. When everyone has the tools to create content, in addition to zero-cost publishing, we do not consume content, we create it.

His talk was inspiration, well thought out and well delivered. I look forward to reading his book and chatting to him more at future events.

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