Tuesday, May 15, 2007
simmons
erstanding mobile devices is crucial to your journey into the heart of the mobile ecosystem. Most mobile phones are not dynamic systems like a computer, with the exception being Smart Phones and PDAs where the hardware is designed around the requirements of the platform.
Most subscribers cannot upgrade the operating system, messaging client or Web browser. Software is often customized to the device model’s specific limitations. In many cases, in order to make devices available to subscribers, hardware and software components must be further customized by the device manufacturer to suit the carrier. This creates a landscape that is wrought with... how should I say, “uniqueness.”
Mobile content companies not only need to own every device sold by a carrier, they must also maintain a tester-developer ratio of as much as 5-to-1 to test functionality on so many devices. This makes it difficult and costly for the little people to enter the market.
Ah, but there is a shining beacon to the device dilemma—standards.
Mobile Standards? They do exist!
When I talk to people that work mostly on the Web, I am always surprised to hear the misconception that there are no standards in mobile. Maybe it’s because we use “standards” to describe both technique and philosophy on the Web, however mobile standards do exist now, and in fact, always have.
One benefit of having a carrier-controlled ecosystem is that flash-in-the-pan technologies never make their way to devices. From the onset carriers and device manufacturers adopted a consistent and future-looking approach to the standards and practices of the mobile ecosystem. For example, take Flash, which exploded on the web in the late 90’s, has taken Macromedia engineers years to get Flash (and Shockwave promised before it) on to mobile devices. But unlike the desktop where you can simply release an application, Macromedia had to work with carriers and manufacturers for five years to get a mobile version of Flash , called Flash Lite, as a viable technology for mobile devices.
In fact for such a diverse ecosystem to exist it relies on basic standards for interoperability. Of course there are outliers that choose to propagate a different method of doing things, but it is not as diverse as one may be led to believe by standards groups peering into the mobile world.
With a modern phone in hand and a firm grasp of basic HTML and CSS, any Web designer/developer can create Web sites for the Mobile Web. It really can be that easy. As well, many traits of the Web beyond code can be applied to mobile, strategy such as information architecture and design and usability principles. Developers can apply standards to both the mobile Web and applications written for devices.
I won’t down play the challenges that device diversity creates, but you can meet the challenges as long as you take a flexible approach to the design and development of your mobile experience.
Conclusion
Hopefully this article helps to you understand and provide some background of mobile. There are a lot of topics that are still yet to be uncovered like mobile applications or mobile technologies like messaging and the Mobile Web. But the first step is understanding that mobile is about context, in order to get mobile you have to first understan
