Mobile Multimedia - Mugs or Morons?

Was going to write up my Future of Mobile Web 2.0 (Part IIb) from the Informa Mobile Web 2.0 Conference today, but this spat that broke out earlier this week sets the scene:

From Scott Karp comes the anti-mobile polemic - in essence he argues that the mobile web is a mug's game - here is a summary (I've cut quite a few bits out, go to Scott's page to read the full thing - but the gist is here):

1. Wireless carrier networks are SLOW

Last weekend, I was trying to figure out how late Costco is open on Sunday. It would have been faster, literally, to call my wife at home and ask her to look it up on a real broadband connection.

2. Public WiFi access is a SCAM

Everyone is running around all excited about iPhone and iPod touch WiFi capabilities, and here comes a Blackberry with WiFi. All I can say is better get your credit card out, because you’re going to pay, and pay, and pay again

3. Sites aren’t formatted for small screens

When I load a site on a tiny screen I want to see the information I’m most likely to be searching for, nicely and intuitively formated.

When I visit Costco on a mobile device, what are the chance I’m going to shop? Almost nil. I want store locations, phone numbers, and hours of operation, and I don’t want to stumble through four slow-loading screens to get that info.

4. Mobile device screens are too small.

Much of what I’ve read about the future of mobile assumes we will do everything on a mobile device that we do on our desktops or laptops, but even if my complaints #1-3 are fully addressed, technology can’t fix the limitations of human eyesight and hand size — at least not for a while.

I think the mobile web will continue for some time to be about getting done what can’t wait until later — like email or looking up store hours or checking headlines or seeking idle entertainment to pass the time.

5. Advertising gets in the way

When pages load with blazing broadband speed, I don’t care if ads load along with them. With a nice wide screen, I don’t even care if ads take up a large portion of the screen real estate.

But on a small screen, all bets are off. Ads that slow down page loading or fill up the screen are going to be most unwelcome, unless they are extremely relevant and useful

Quick to the aid of Planet Mobile comes one Russell Beattie, who responds that in essence Scott is a moron because:

1) 3G is slow? Get a better 3G phone and then learn how to use it. My preferred mobile (an LG CU500) gets DSL speeds down, and my preferred browser (Opera mini) is as easy to use as a desktop browser, and just as fast.

2) Public Wifi is a Scam? No sh*t, Sherlock. You can't depend on WiFi outside your house or office. Again, get yourself a decent phone on a 3G network and you won't have this problem. I double-check prices inside Best Buy in seconds, chat on IM while having a coffee and entertain my kid with downloaded videos all via 3G networks, and I don't think twice about whether there's WiFi around.

3) Sites aren't formatted for small screens... Um, well, then those sites aren't part of the Mobile Web, are they? Even if you're talking about accessing regular web sites while mobile it's still a dumb-ass thing to bitch about as it just highlights one's inability to use a decent mobile browser and or the lack of effort to bookmark a site's mobile version. A couple years ago there might have been a dearth of mobile sites, but just about every major site out there now - from Typepad to Yahoo to Wikipedia, have m.* versions.

4) Mobile device screens are too small? Oh, well, that's it then! By this definition, the mobile web will never un-suck, because if you're looking at the web on a device that doesn't fit in your pocket, IT'S NOT MOBILE NOW IS IT?!? I guess we can all go home now. Someone call me when they've figured out how to put an 20 inch XVGA screen in the palm of my hand. What a f*cking dumb-ass criticism.

5) Advertising gets in the way? Again, what the f*ck? First, no ads means you'd be bitching about how everything on the mobile web costs money. Secondly, there's hardly any ads on the mobile web to begin with. Thirdly, are there any regular websites out there that don't have ads? Complaining about a website having ads is like complaining it's not 1996 anymore. Grow up.

This exactly sets the scene for what I want to write in my next post - the wide gap of expecations between Planet Mobile and the Web community . Scott has roundly been criticized for not having an iPhone, which definitely improves the performance envelope of mobile devices as far as the web is concerned (and has a bigger screen), but in essence his criticisms largely stand even then.

The reality is that:

1. Relative Mobile speeds are getting worse.

Mobile bandwidth speeds are not going up as fast as the Web. When 3G started it was about 380 Kb/sec, the broadband 'Net was c 500 kb/sec. Now my broadband is 8 Mb (Ok, more like 3 really) but my 3G is only just touching c 800 kb/sec - and thats in the UK. That makes a very noticeable difference

2. Public WiFi is still a scam, but getting better


It's still expensive, there still are not a lot of hotspots, and free ones are like hens teeth - but it is getting noticeably better and cheaper

3. Sites are not formatted for small screens

True - and the reason is that the demand so far is still pretty low, the standards are not agreed so that rendering on any 2 phones (or same phone on 2 networks) is often dissimilar - ie its hard to do and not a lot of people are screaming for it yet. Speak to anyone who is not a mobile geek about their mobile internet experience, and you will get some variant of "I tried, but its too hard / takes too long / is too fiddly / etc so I gave up". Planet Mobile, those are your customers talking - call them f*ckwits all you want, but poking the people who pay you in the eye is not a sustainable long term strategy

4) Mobile Device screens are too small

Yes - the iPhone size one is only just big enough for basics, probably needs to be a bit bigger still. Not a 20" VGA, but probably iPhone size minima (+ 20%?) will (imho) be about the endgame. I am very interested in how mobile screen glasses will be used to make up for some of this.

5) Ads get in the way

True, and there are 3 reasons for this:

- firstly, the ad industry has never been backward about coming forward - and is still learning what restraint in mobile looks like

- secondly, small screen real estate means that Ads are more intrusive so that restraint needs to be even greater

- thirdly, the mobile is very personal so unwanted Ads irritate more, and those that take up bandwidth as well irritate even more

Also, the correct ratio of "value exchange" - aka bribery - to watch Ads on a mobile is still an area of huge experimentation, and there is likely to be a wide variety of difference by country, demographic etc

Over the last few weeks we have been doing quite a few interviews of industry players on the future of mobile multimedia and been to a number of new media conferences - telco, media, mobile and ad industry ones - and I would say that by and large most of the non-mobile players would agree with Scott, and Planet Mobile still has a tendency to think like Russell.

So we will expect more denial from Planet Mobile for a while longer, but money talks eventually however, and at the moment the customer ain't buying, so something needs to change. Mobile multimedia right now is always the thing that will be big next year.

The Mobile Web is a different medium to the fixed internet Web and will probably be different in its look and feel, much like all new media starst off "like" the ones before and then develop their own "voice". I think Scott's point re what bits of the CostCo website he wants when on the move is illuminating and tallies with our experience. Our own view is that in the early days anyway it will be best used as an adjunct service to a richer web experience, with a focus on things that mobile does better - location based, on the move based applications.

And that leads smoothly on to the next piece, the Future of Mobile Web 2.0 - part II

Postscript - nice take on the handset issues here

Although I agree with most of Karp’s points, I reckon we have to change the devices, not the Internet. I am a relatively heavy mobile web user, and I actually have a problem with many sites that are supposedly optimized for mobiles. They tend to presume that I am using the tiniest possible screen - my mobile screen is bigger than some - and sometimes make it difficult to access the full content of the site. I end up trying to figure out how to get past the mobile-detection, pretending to be a desktop browser.

My preference then is for devices that do smart things with zooming, scaling and paging, so that the real Web is easier to use. Based on my brief hands-on test, Apple’s iPhone is fairly good at this. So is my Samsung i600, and so are the Nokia Internet Tablets that I’ve seen, to name a couple of others.

Site designers that really want to be device-friendly should never assume that the browser is capable of running Flash 9, Silverlight, or the latest Ajax libraries. After all, plain old HTML is fantastic for diverse devices - that is what it was designed for.