The next battlefield for eyeballs is not your desktop. It’s your mobile phone. The advertisements claim that Mobile phone is the nearest thing to a computer. The user experience may belie this fact but then let the ads claim whatever they wish to.
Primarily, the most exciting development is development of Opera Widgets (which is as simple as designing a web page) and make it work with Opera 9 and Opera Mobile browser. This means the content of rich applications suite that can be easily developed by the web masters in terms of Value Added Services or making the mobile browsing more feature rich.
This post was initially intended to compare the showdown between Opera Mobile and the new development suite from Microsoft. Opera definitely has taken a lead and the battle for the next playground is your mobile handset. The details would be too technical and I believe that it would defeat the purpose of this blog. Suffice to say is that Apple’s iPhone strategy is being carefully watched and anything can be commented upon only after June/ July launch. It has definitely opened up a vast range of possibilities for feature rich ownership experience. The new smart phones can also connect on to the telephone networks to make calls.
It holds up a lot of promise for India. If the price of the web enabled handsets come down sufficiently, we could see aggressive marketing from the mobile companies to get people signed up for the same.
Mobile companies have started getting on an advertising binge. Hutch is promoting this as “live search” and expects to reap benefits from increased usage. There have been dissertations written about mobile search and I don’t want to add anything to confusion. However, we were happy anyway without the “search” happening in any meaningful manner earlier on and most of the search engines index only a fraction of the net. Nevertheless, this is first for an Indian mobile company and for the partnering portal to generate revenues for their investments. (This is in no way an endorsement for Hutch).
The companies ought to explore the Wireless internet in much more meaningful manner than games/ringtones or logos. While they would remain a money spinner, people would find ways and means to circumvent the controls on the media. I am not opening up the debate for Digital Rights Management; content alone (or means to index it) cannot remain the exclusive purview of the chosen few. Hence, it makes sense to keep the content free from the walled portals and instead allow free access. The companies retain the right to charge for the access or as “enablers”. This would make much more sense than pooling in money to create “exclusive portals” as one stop access.
Coming back to applications, a feature suit of software for mobiles would do much good. Ubuntu recently announced development of a mobile edition for mobiles; I am sure that the likes of Microsoft would be shitting in their pants and sharpening their knives for their FUD campaigns.
The possibilities are endless.
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