Stumbling over the mobile web

Mippin attended a session last week called Mobile Web Strategies at CTIA in San Francisco.

A recurring theme through the day was the tripping over the term mobile web and its similarity or not with the ‘real’ internet. I did not realise it was so complicated. Nitin Bhandari from Skyfire came to the rescue with the simplest and most eloquent explanation of what the mobile web is:

mobile [access to the] web.

That’s it. Job done. Wikipedia now agrees with this too.

Yes, it is true that in time that publishers will have to consider how to modify and refine their propositions to the user depending on the device they are entering the site from but this is only one element of context which will be available – it could also include my location, my presence, the site I am on etc etc etc.

Our view is that there is no separate mobile internet and that there should not be one. In time, mobile will add its own flavour to the internet as people tailor to its capabilities and its limitations.

Publishers are far better served getting their existing content onto mobile and then working over time to modify the proposition to allow for the different entry points – of which the device is just one. This is where the Mippin Mobilizer makes sense and one of the reasons it was created.