Sep 9, 14:33
Mobile Web kicks off
We were promised to have the mobile web going faster and main stream in the begining of 2006. As we’re approaching the Q4 of the year we finally witness some real activities in the “mobile web” market. Goolge started testing AdWords on mobile in Japan, Digg introduced a mobile version of their portal. Along with that most of the mobile phones come with the push e-mail technology built-in and the 3G support gets wider and broader.
Content, content, content
CNN, BBC, ESPN, Google, Yahoo!, Digg, Technorati, and region’s AMEInfo are some of the content providers that have been mobile for a while. It’s simple math, simplified, shortened, and customized content to display on mobile screens. Very convenient. No biggie, but valuable. Along the same lines go the mobile RSS and syndication services, nothing hot. Content is being consumed, that’s the important part. Bandwidth is being exausted and leveraged, that’s the part that we care about.
Ads and Monetizing
The old fashion SMS marketing, which in my opinion is nothing but annoyance to carriers is finally to be replaced with cheaper ads, obviously mobile web ads are going to be a lot cheaper than sending bulk SMSs given the service charges on the content providers.
Google’s been playing with dialing ads instead of web-fashion clicking ads, that is; according to the content the Ad would give you an opportunity to have you call the advertiser, slick! It’s the nature of the beast, content for Ads, and it is going well given the freeloading culture of web-savvy people.
While Google is not the only player in the field, having Yahoo! playing with the same, it is a an indication for the growth that the mobile web is holding to. The numbers might not be clear at this time and might not even justify these lab products, however, shows at least the importance that it brings in and how the broadband mobile connections are going to be spread as we go further.
UAE and Middle East
Device-wise, we ain’t got no excuse. We have’em all. 3G support, email, browser, you name it. Connection-wise, we’re short. Our operators have us supporting WAP, GPRS, and 3G; but it ain’t cheap! It is still not a consumer level service where every person would be able to play with it or have it consuming bandwidth. It is still expensive, even though Saudi’s operator “Jawal” has a cool campaign spreading GPRS to consumers which is a good start to get down to another level of users.
Long story short, the future of mobile web in the middle east is in the hands of telecomm service providers and operators.
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Friday September 29, 2006
Flower Delivery said:
Mobile web is soon going to be the most annoying thing in our lives, as soon as communication will be cheap enough for worldwide corporations to afford flooding the space with ads.
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