Wednesday, December 18, 2002
The Web is Not Friendly to Mobile Devices
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THOUGHT" @ 09:21 AM
Yes, that title is an understatement, but let me tell you a little story. A few weeks ago I was out shopping with my wife, and I suggested we stop at a little Peking food restaurant for some Ginger Beef. We placed the order, and sat back to wait. A minute later, my XDA chimed - I had a Microsoft digital video chat to attend in fifteen minutes. 8O We had already placed our order, and I was really looking forward to the food. What to do, what to do?
I had a hunch I knew what the results would be, but I thought I should try - I had the URL of the chat, and I had a fully connected mobile device, right? It might be a s-l-o-w chat with me being on my XDA, but it would save me having to rush home and miss dinner. I went to the URL, and what happened? An error message about not being able to load the chat client software - dead end. No solution. Get the food to go, rush home, do the chat on a "real" PC. The Pocket PC failed me.
Microsoft talks about empowering mobile works, letting them work anywhere - but how much of that is talk and how much is reality? Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe that the Pocket PC is the best PDA on the planet right now for my needs, but this scenario was a big let down. Sure, I understand all the technical reasons - Pocket Internet Explorer doesn't support the technologies used on the chat page (I believe it's an ActiveX control for x86 machines). Technical rationalizations ("Maybe next version this will work...") don't help when you need a solution.
As the subject line says, the Web is not a Pocket PC friendly place. Need more proof? Keep reading.
Who Said Online Shopping Was Easy?
The first day I got my XDA, I was out at a local book store. I was going to buy a few books, then I thought "Why not check the prices online, and if they're better, order from there?". Amazon.ca had recently launched their Canadian site, so off I went. Problem one: Amazon.ca has no mobile version of their site. Fifteen minutes later, after much waiting and muttering, I finished placing my order. Did it work? Yes. Did it work well? No. The GPRS was anything but "high speed". The un-optimized site required a great deal of scrolling and waiting. It was painful and required far too much patience on my part. There was nothing "fast" or "easy" about that online shopping experience.
Amazon.com has a Pocket PC version of their site, but apparently the people running the Canadian site didn't think it was important to support mobile devices. And can we blame them?
If They Come, Then You'll Build It
It's a classic chicken-and-egg scenario. Most people don't buy technology - they buy solutions. Sure, the hard-core geeks among us will throw 2 gigs of RAM into our computer simply because we can, but most people buy technology or upgrade their computers to solve problems they have - or to enable them to do new things. If I went up to the average person on the street and said "For $500 you can buy PDA that has GPRS!" they'd stare at me blankly.
If I said "For $500 you can buy this PDA and order books, movie tickets, music, plane tickets, or gamble your life-savings away...while you're standing in line for your Mocha-Frappa-Latte-Slush!" I'd get some interest - and an instant sale if the price were $200. People buy solutions, not technology.
In the case of Amazon.ca, can we blame them for not having a mobile version of their site? Look at the numbers - I'm using one of perhaps a few dozen XDA-class devices in Canada (they're not sold here yet), and I'd be surprised if there were 50K devices used in Canada (whether Palm or Pocket PC) that were capable of a decent online browser experience. In a time where IT budgets are already stretched to the max, how much motivation is there for Amazon.ca, and indeed most sites out there, to spend money on deploying a mobile version of their site? How much revenue will they really generate from it? It's a vicious circle - they can't generate revenue from me, Mr. Mobile Buyer, until they build a mobile site, and they won't build a mobile site until there's critical mass. People like us lose out in that equation.
The optimist in me wants to say that if more and more people buy wireless PDAs, services and solutions will magically appear for them. To a certain extent, that's true - where there are buyers (people with credit cards), sellers will appear, and a market is born. But will people buy these devices if the solutions aren't there? If I try to show someone how "easy" it is to shop online with my XDA, and they see that it's a struggle, will they buy it? Probably not.
Reality Check on Aisle 7
One day I sat down with my XDA and decided I wanted to try out some new software - all from my Pocket PC. I went to Handango's Mobile site and I was quite impressed. Handango has a slick site, perfectly formatted for mobile devices, and I was able to download a few applications. But I noticed that the software selection was quite limited - some of the applications that I really wanted to try out weren't available. A comparison of the Top 10 selling applications on Handango (check out right-hand side bar) with the Handango Best Sellers Over the Air reveals something very telling: most of the best-selling applications are not even available for download! A comparison of the two lists reveals that only three of the ten best-selling applications are available for download. Even Microsoft's own Pocket Streets is missing from the mobile site!
[As a side note, I'm not a big fan of the mobile.site.com concept - how will consumers know that the sub-domain is there?]
Undaunted, I thought I'd seek out the applications directly by going to Web sites of the top Pocket PC developers - and the results were even worse. Of the five or so that I tried, not a single one had a redirect for mobile devices, and none had their software in a CAB format that I could try out. If Pocket PC developers don't have mobile sites for their own customers who they know are using the devices, how can we expect mainstream Web sites to have them?
Is There a Solution?
So what's the solution to this? Although I shudder at the concept, I wonder if we need...a committee. 8O We need Microsoft, Palm, Dell, HP, Sony and every other big-name company involved with mobile devices to sit down, hammer out a reasonable spec that will work with the majority of devices out there, create a toolkit for Webmasters, and start to evangelize it. Target the top 100 Web sites on the 'Net, and encourage them to create self-directing mobile versions for PDA owners. I'm not talking about WAP here - I'm talking about real HTML standards, dished out by normal HTTP servers. Or what if they created a free software gateway that would intelligently serve up mobile versions of a site on the fly? I know there are companies out there offering these services, but if it takes budget, it needs justification, and that's where we get back to being the egg (or was it the chicken?).
Alternatively, what if every mobile device user, whether Palm or Pocket PC, banded together and started an email campaign targeted at one site at a time? If we speak in one common voice, are there enough of us to make a difference?
The Saviour Smartphone
Perhaps, just perhaps, this will happen by default as the number of Smartphones (Windows or Symbian-based) flood the market. Consumers will buy them for the phone part, games, music, and email. And once there are millions of Smartphones out there, the market will form up around them. And, finally, the Web will be a friendlier place for our devices.
I had a hunch I knew what the results would be, but I thought I should try - I had the URL of the chat, and I had a fully connected mobile device, right? It might be a s-l-o-w chat with me being on my XDA, but it would save me having to rush home and miss dinner. I went to the URL, and what happened? An error message about not being able to load the chat client software - dead end. No solution. Get the food to go, rush home, do the chat on a "real" PC. The Pocket PC failed me.
Microsoft talks about empowering mobile works, letting them work anywhere - but how much of that is talk and how much is reality? Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe that the Pocket PC is the best PDA on the planet right now for my needs, but this scenario was a big let down. Sure, I understand all the technical reasons - Pocket Internet Explorer doesn't support the technologies used on the chat page (I believe it's an ActiveX control for x86 machines). Technical rationalizations ("Maybe next version this will work...") don't help when you need a solution.
As the subject line says, the Web is not a Pocket PC friendly place. Need more proof? Keep reading.
Who Said Online Shopping Was Easy?
The first day I got my XDA, I was out at a local book store. I was going to buy a few books, then I thought "Why not check the prices online, and if they're better, order from there?". Amazon.ca had recently launched their Canadian site, so off I went. Problem one: Amazon.ca has no mobile version of their site. Fifteen minutes later, after much waiting and muttering, I finished placing my order. Did it work? Yes. Did it work well? No. The GPRS was anything but "high speed". The un-optimized site required a great deal of scrolling and waiting. It was painful and required far too much patience on my part. There was nothing "fast" or "easy" about that online shopping experience.
Amazon.com has a Pocket PC version of their site, but apparently the people running the Canadian site didn't think it was important to support mobile devices. And can we blame them?
If They Come, Then You'll Build It
It's a classic chicken-and-egg scenario. Most people don't buy technology - they buy solutions. Sure, the hard-core geeks among us will throw 2 gigs of RAM into our computer simply because we can, but most people buy technology or upgrade their computers to solve problems they have - or to enable them to do new things. If I went up to the average person on the street and said "For $500 you can buy PDA that has GPRS!" they'd stare at me blankly.
If I said "For $500 you can buy this PDA and order books, movie tickets, music, plane tickets, or gamble your life-savings away...while you're standing in line for your Mocha-Frappa-Latte-Slush!" I'd get some interest - and an instant sale if the price were $200. People buy solutions, not technology.
In the case of Amazon.ca, can we blame them for not having a mobile version of their site? Look at the numbers - I'm using one of perhaps a few dozen XDA-class devices in Canada (they're not sold here yet), and I'd be surprised if there were 50K devices used in Canada (whether Palm or Pocket PC) that were capable of a decent online browser experience. In a time where IT budgets are already stretched to the max, how much motivation is there for Amazon.ca, and indeed most sites out there, to spend money on deploying a mobile version of their site? How much revenue will they really generate from it? It's a vicious circle - they can't generate revenue from me, Mr. Mobile Buyer, until they build a mobile site, and they won't build a mobile site until there's critical mass. People like us lose out in that equation.
The optimist in me wants to say that if more and more people buy wireless PDAs, services and solutions will magically appear for them. To a certain extent, that's true - where there are buyers (people with credit cards), sellers will appear, and a market is born. But will people buy these devices if the solutions aren't there? If I try to show someone how "easy" it is to shop online with my XDA, and they see that it's a struggle, will they buy it? Probably not.
Reality Check on Aisle 7
One day I sat down with my XDA and decided I wanted to try out some new software - all from my Pocket PC. I went to Handango's Mobile site and I was quite impressed. Handango has a slick site, perfectly formatted for mobile devices, and I was able to download a few applications. But I noticed that the software selection was quite limited - some of the applications that I really wanted to try out weren't available. A comparison of the Top 10 selling applications on Handango (check out right-hand side bar) with the Handango Best Sellers Over the Air reveals something very telling: most of the best-selling applications are not even available for download! A comparison of the two lists reveals that only three of the ten best-selling applications are available for download. Even Microsoft's own Pocket Streets is missing from the mobile site!
[As a side note, I'm not a big fan of the mobile.site.com concept - how will consumers know that the sub-domain is there?]
Undaunted, I thought I'd seek out the applications directly by going to Web sites of the top Pocket PC developers - and the results were even worse. Of the five or so that I tried, not a single one had a redirect for mobile devices, and none had their software in a CAB format that I could try out. If Pocket PC developers don't have mobile sites for their own customers who they know are using the devices, how can we expect mainstream Web sites to have them?
Is There a Solution?
So what's the solution to this? Although I shudder at the concept, I wonder if we need...a committee. 8O We need Microsoft, Palm, Dell, HP, Sony and every other big-name company involved with mobile devices to sit down, hammer out a reasonable spec that will work with the majority of devices out there, create a toolkit for Webmasters, and start to evangelize it. Target the top 100 Web sites on the 'Net, and encourage them to create self-directing mobile versions for PDA owners. I'm not talking about WAP here - I'm talking about real HTML standards, dished out by normal HTTP servers. Or what if they created a free software gateway that would intelligently serve up mobile versions of a site on the fly? I know there are companies out there offering these services, but if it takes budget, it needs justification, and that's where we get back to being the egg (or was it the chicken?).
Alternatively, what if every mobile device user, whether Palm or Pocket PC, banded together and started an email campaign targeted at one site at a time? If we speak in one common voice, are there enough of us to make a difference?
The Saviour Smartphone
Perhaps, just perhaps, this will happen by default as the number of Smartphones (Windows or Symbian-based) flood the market. Consumers will buy them for the phone part, games, music, and email. And once there are millions of Smartphones out there, the market will form up around them. And, finally, the Web will be a friendlier place for our devices.
