The iPhone is already old news. But is really iPhone what the advertisement claimd it to be? Is the iPhone a “mobiletech-alikes killer”? One of the key selling points was that you finally can read full blown desktop web pages on your mobile phone. That would be a “mobiletech killer”. Now when the iPhone has been in the market for a while, and we have experienced the phone in real life we now know the answer.
A while back I browsed accross this report from Rubicon Consulting.
This is the highlights as I see it:
About 40% of iPhone users say the iPhone has trouble displaying some websites they want to visit. This means that a “traditional desktop web page” is not good enough. Even if this is the killer device that is able to render desktop pages in a OK way. When your users are unhappy with the way your service works on certain devices you need to adapt to these devices. As Mobiletech always have said: “as long as the screen is smaller than on a PC and the interaction model is different from a PC, you will need device adaptation”. In addition to this, the iPhone introduces a set of new features that makes the browsing experience much better when used correctly on the iPhone. These features, such as “page sliding” for example, gives little value on a PC but huge value on the iPhone. Last but not least, the Apple users are used to, or even excepct to be treated specially. They will not settle with a mobile portal designed for “traditional handsets”. They want the Apple experience. So the need for device adaptation is now even bigger than before the iPhone.
The other important highlight is that the iPhone enables the user to actually use mobile internet services. More than 75% of iPhone users say it has led them to do more mobile browsing. Google have registered 50% more searches from iPhone than from any other smartphone. This indicates that Apple has sucseeded in removing some obstacles for the user. Further, AdMob reports for May that the iPhone was in the top 20 devices in every market where Apple has a formal Operator distribution partnership.
For Mobiletech this means that the complexity is increasing in terms of device adaptation. We now have a broader range of devices to support. iPhone also introduced new extremities. The iPhone is extreme in its hardware, software and interaction model. Many of the iPhone sitest out there are tailored for iPhone. Mobiletech does not believe in tailoring portals. Soon you will end up with an unmanagable number of of them. Dextella lets you code your portal once and it works on any device. Also for iPhone ofcourse.
Netcom/TeliaSonera is lauching iPhone 11th of July this summer. I am happy to announce that we are more than ready, we have infact been waiting for this to happen for years. We have already one customer ready for the iPhone launch in Scandinavia. Dagens Nyheter in Sweden. Visit mobil.dn.se with your iPhone. Picure below shows a screenshot.
So to conclude upon the iPhone; there is nothing but good about it. It is sexy, it works, its fast, it enables the user to use mobile services easily, it give the user value. It is definitely no threat to companies like Mobiletech. On the contrary we are glad that the iPhone finally has arrived! We have been waiting on it for years. Now we can finally start to develop the software and services we have been holding back due to poor performance. Stay tuned.
References:
- Apple iPhone: Successes and Challenges | March 31, 2008 35 | ©2008 Rubicon Consulting, Inc. |http://rubiconconsulting.com/downloads/whitepapers/Rubicon-iPhone_User_Survey.pdf
- IntoMobile: http://www.intomobile.com/2008/02/21/apple-iphone-generates-50-times-more-google-searches-than-any-other-mobile-device.html
- AdMob Mobile Metrics Rep (May 2008)
Read more about dextella and the near future.
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