Beyond iPhone - where are we going?

I bought an iPhone in Dubai at the start of January 2008. It was 'unlocked' and I didn't enquire further about its origins. Once back in Australia I put my Vodafone Australia SIM into the iPhone and set about configuring all the features. Most things worked a dream as I have come to expect from Apple. There are a few glitches but I imagine that they will be resolved in the regular maintenance releases and also as Apple moves the product across the world. We pay a price for early adoption, but we also get to use all the toys before everyone else.

That said, I am impressed with how many iPhones I have seen in Sydney as the iPhone is not yet launched in Australia.

So what can I say about this device that hasn't been said a thousand times already? Well the reason I bought it was to try to validate the Steve Jobs vision that "we don't want the baby internet". Meaning we don't want a mobile internet which is any different to the "grown-up" internet. That is the internet we have already. Why do I want to investigate this statement? Well my company Dialogue Communications has spent a good deal of time and money developing Mobile Site Building and publishing products which expect that we will continue to want this 'baby' internet for some time to come. So I want to know whether its time to hang up our coding gloves and make a living out of importing 2 wheeled skateboards into Australia.

"We don't want the baby internet".

So let us examine the claim from Mr Jobs. On the face of it we, meaning the world in general, do not need any more websites, and if we run a company we don't want to spend more scarce marketing dollars creating a second website for phones. But can we get away with just the big site? Well thats the question Apple think they have answered in the affirmative with the iPhone. So here is the case for the iPhone being able to handle a big site:

• It has WLAN as well as EDGE / GPRS. And guess what you are in a wireless hotspot more often than you'd imagine. So data rich sites are perfectly acceptable on WLAN.
• There is the portrait/landscape flip thing which gives a pretty good viewing screen for such a small device.
• There is the fantastic pinch-n-pan screen navigation. Without this the challenge would be a real joke. I think this is the real smart thing which Apple has got right.

  But is that enough?

Well it is enough in a "if the bars not open then a glass of water will be fine" kind of way. Meaning that its the best web browsing experience I have ever come across in a device which fits into the palm of my hand. But it isn't as good as I'd like in an ideal world where we can be picky.

So what is the case for being able to scale down the big internet? Well there are two areas really 'Control' and 'Display'. We are stuck in this world with a few things which are difficult to change here they are:

1. We want a device which will fit into our hands and pockets and bags. So they must be small. They should also be light so we don't think twice about bringing them, and forget we have them until we need them.
2. We have hands with fingers and whilst our fingers may be larger or smaller, they are still a bit clumsy when you have a querty keyboard on the space the size of a match-book.
3. We have eyes which need writing to be a certain size before we know what it says. Some of us use glasses to help, but even my 7 year old son can't read the smallest print size we see on the iPhone.

Paper is Big

There's no getting away from the above things, they are physiological, and they conspire to keep all these mobile device manufacturers in gainful employment trying to solve these problems. It reminds me of a product launch presentation Nokia ran in 1998 for the Nokia Communicator. The product manager in the UK was Mark Squires and although he was expounding the merits of what was and still is a fantastic device, he still felt obliged to point out that when it comes to jotting down a few notes or doing a diagram to explain what your new widget will do, then there is a competitor product which is cheap, portable, easy to use, doesn't need batteries and isn't totally bad for the environment - Paper.

So what I'm trying to say is that whilst the early adopters like me, and these generation 'Y' people will cope with the iPhone as a web browser. The average joe will tell you that it is stupid to try to pinch/twist/flick and pan your way around the big BBC website to get to the bottom of Kevin Keegan's decision to try to bring soccer success back to Newcastle United.

So if there is a reason to have a mobile site which is designed with the small screen in mind, and you have to do a bit more work to create such a site. Is there something beneficial that you can do with this site to justify all the hard work? Well my view is that there are plenty of reasons to be cheerful about mobile site creation. So here is my top list:

Reasons to be cheerful about the baby internet

1. There are about 100 time more mobile phones around than there are PCs. So you aren't exactly wasting your time on something for the minority.
2. You always have your phone with you. Keys, Wallet/Purse, Phone - you go back home without one of these (unless you're going surfing in which case you're excused!).
3. You can obtain more useful demographic information about someone who has a phone. For example, their location, their make and model of handset (which can indicate economic group and lifestyle), whether they are pre or post-pay, and their unique mobile number.
4. A phone is more personal so it is more reasonable to assume it is always the same person browsing so you can make your site or advertising more targetted, and use the information you know to personalise your site.
5. You can sell things to people who have phones and they can pay without needing to key in credit card details, they can even pay without divulging their identity.

So the baby internet, may not be something we want to avoid, instead it might provide some fantastic opportunities to reach people more effectively with your products or services. So what about the iPhone. Well guess what, just because Steve Jobs claims the iPhone can navigate the big internet, it doesn't mean that it won't do the job a whole lot better on mobile sites which re-size and re-configure themselves to fit the iPhone precisely.

Where does the iPhone go now? It goes to the mobile internet and does it in great style.