The Web is making a shift once again and it’s going to be great. Within the next few years there will be an incredible growth in mobile phone Internet usage. Cheap tariffs and larger screens will lead the way in this revolution and it will be another significant change in what has already been an incredible few decades.

What this change means for business owners is that websites will become twice as relevant as they are now. What was once restricted to being accessed sitting down at a desk will be more prominent than newspapers and billboards.

Why?

Anyone who’s had a black and white mobile phone will remember WAP. This cut-down version of the internet promised to be all the rage at a time when the ‘dot com boom’ was just bubbling. Seven years on WAP is almost irrelevant, while most of us have phones that can do it, we don’t use it for a number of reasons.

Take the film industry for example. Producers have often tried to please all by having films shot with a ’safe area’ that makes sure the image suits both wide screen and rectangular TV audiences. In the last decade TV audiences have abandoned the lesser ‘4:3 aspect ratio’ (the classic TV shape) and instead adopted wide screen in the home. For some time now, web developers have tried to please all by offering cut down small screen or text versions of websites. It’s not hard to see where this will go, we will soon have the Internet on our phones as good as it is on our computers.

How?

The first push towards this goal will be the new generation of large screen mobile phones, it’s a change that’s been coming ever since PDA’s like Palm adopted this form. One of the greatest achievements of the products like the iPhone will be making mobile web browsing a reality because it displays the real website and not the cut down text-only facsimile we were promised at the start of the decade with WAP.

The second push must come from the mobile networks. Just as flat rate dial-up was demanded by the consumer, and finally given by the ISP’s, flat rate mobile broadband will become a reality because customers demand it and are viciously sceptical of the current offerings.

What does it mean?

We all know how useful Google is compared to conventional means of finding information - the Yellow Pages, Encyclopaedias, etc. Using Google on a mobile will be as popular as using it in the home or office.

If your business is location based i.e., a shop, now is the time to anticipate what’s going to happen. Already people are Googling on the street and using that information to find shops and entertainment that they want to visit right now. If your shop’s website doesn’t make it easy for the customer to get to your physical shop you’re going to miss out.

There will also be a big increase in the number of web users. One advantage of having a congested city and late trains is that people will resort more and more to the web for their entertainment. There has already been a trend for newspapers to move online, when mobile browsing really takes off there will be even more incentive to do this.

Gobisoft

Already we are working on an innovative approach to web design and we’re not afraid of the mobile web. Gobisoft clients’ websites will be ready for devices like the iPhone which bring new rendering engines into popularity. We will also go above and beyond by making sure that components and designs we use are as easy to use on mobile devices as they are at home. As this reality gets closer we can’t wait to get rid of the film producer analogy and make our websites ‘wide screen’ on all screens.

- Theo

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 26th, 2007 at 12:03 pm and is filed under Technical, Design, Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.