In February 2009, 66.61% was the iPhones share of mobile web traffic, according to net applications. That’s a bit more than the second most popular OS Windows Mobile, at 6.91%.

258 million mobile broadband users around the world by 2014, according to a forecast by Ovum. That’s just laptop users; Ovum predicts that phones with 3G technology or better will be in 2 billion pockets.

This article I written originally for the Insight Guide – A monthly Lifestyle Magazine for readers in Brighton and surrounding areas. The article gives newcomers to mobile internet a reason to take its future seriously and look ahead to what’s coming soon on the mobile platform.

There is only one web, the principle of making the same information and services to users regardless of the way they access it. No doubt about it, the number of mobile devices we choose to interact with websites and online applications is increasing, comared to just desktop computers. Mobile will revolutionise they way we gather and intereact with information in the next 2 years, and this is using the mobile in your pocket, not just the iPhone.
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Presentation by Daniel Appelquist of Vodafone

Vodafone: 191 million customer worldwide, and member of w3c mobile working group

Do users want the web on their mobile?

The answer is yes, due to:

1. The largest uptake of mobile web content in africa and developing countries
2. Creation of worldwide mobile web initiative

Leading to the mobile web best practices – which focus on the following:

1. designing for one web
2. rely on web standards
3. stay away from known hazards
4. be cautious of device implications
5. optimise navigation

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These tools are great for seeing how your web pages look in these handheld devices:

http://www.cached.it/english/Pda-Simulator.php

http://www.google.com/xhtml

Why dont you try it on our sites to see how accessible, and easy they are to read. Or test it on your own favourite site.

Design pages as though they were to be displayed on a text-only browser.

• Always use features of the markup designed to support alternate rendering such as the longdesc and alt attributes in XHTML.
• Use only features from the markup that are known to be supported by the device in question.
• Avoid things like CSS image replacement and pictures of words.

Valid Markup

• If the page markup is invalid this will result in unpredictable and possibly incomplete presentation.
• Use percentage and relative measures such as em, ex, bolder, larger and thick.

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In discussing the limitations of mobile devices for delivery of Web content it is easy to lose sight of the fact that they are extremely popular and very common.

This popularity largely stems at present from them being:

• personal
• personalizable
• portable
• connected
• and increasingly multi-functional beyond their original purpose of voice communications.

In addition to these factors, the advantages of mobile devices will increasingly
include:

• location awareness
• one-handed operation
• always on
• universal alerting device

By way of illustration of some of these factors: the Web can go where you go. You do not have to remember to do something on the Web when you get back to your computer. You can do it immediately, within the context that made you want to use the Web in the first place.

Moreover, with mobile devices appearing in all shapes and forms, and with a growing variety of features like location technology, cameras, voice recognition, touch screens etc, the Web can reach a much wider audience, and at all times in all situations. It has the opportunity to reach into places where wires cannot go, to places previously unthinkable (e.g. providing medical info to mountain rescue scenes) and to accompany everyone as easily as they carry the time on their wristwatches.

Finally, today, many more people have access to mobile devices than access to a desktop computer. This is likely to be very significant in developing countries, where Web-capable mobile devices may play as similar a role in deploying wide-spread Web access as the mobile phone has played for providing “plain old telephone service”.