Rants And Ramblings About Mobile Technology

Once I had the vision that mobile phones would have a desktop, kind of like on a PC, with local applications as well as links to web sites sharing the same surface, and by extensively using JavaScript and HTTP communication with services. This way the web sites would not look and behave that different from local applications. At Obigo we had discussions about implementing what later became AJAX in our web browser, but then also supporting e.g. SMS and MMS communication from the JavaScript applications. I figure many had the same thoughts. I know Opera and Access did at the time.

Anyway, if the iPhone is an indicator of future phone functionality (and it is in many ways, in advance) it seems web browsing will take the second fiddle, as even companies that don’t have anything sensible to present via applications (see e.g. Coca Cola’s “magic bottle” application as an example) still prefer to make applications instead of mobile web sites.

There are some good reasons why:

• The interactivity is much much better, to the point that mobile web sites are outright laughable in comparison.
• Applications are fast (at least on the iPhone) and can sport animations, 3D graphics, sound, GPS, accelerometer, compass, camera etc etc, functionality more or less impossible to add to mobile web sites.

I’ve said the same things about MIDlets, but it’s even more apparent on the iPhone.

Let’s see if HTML 5 can shift the balance, but I doubt it. When will phones support HTML 5?

I only wish this had happened already with MIDlets, but phone manufacturers didn’t realize making phones optimized for applications is a paradigm shift and requires a completely different mindset in the design of the phone.

Posted by Anders Borg 23:10 | Permalink