UKNM: Re: UKNM Digest V1 #792

[Tom Hume]

At 19:17 07/12/2000 +0000, UKNM Digest wrote:


>Forget WAP as a serious long term development route. Users are updating

>their mobiles every 20 months on average. If that trend contiues and the

new

>generations of combi phone/organizer/browsers are rolled out then this

>should mean that  a good proportion of these mobiles will have PDA size

>screens and Micro-browsers built in . Content development will be a lot

>easier than for WAP as well. OK there will still be limitations but it's

>certainly a nice growth market that I'll be looking at.


OK:


1. WAP is the only means of doing interactive mobile apps in the UK today.

Yes, you can do a lot with SMS (and a few things that aren't currently

possible with WAP at all), but it's limited in terms of what you can shift

around. If you want to get experience working with non-trivial apps for

mobile devices, now, in the UK, it's WAP or nothing (but integrate with SMS

to add "push" style capabilities).


2. Taking your advice above, it'll be over 2 years (at the bare minimum),

assuming someone releases a "combi phone/organizer/browser" at a price

cheap enough for it to have mass appeal in the next 6 months, before the

majority of UK folks can use this new system. If you're happy waiting 2

years before you start looking at mobile devices (and believe that

everything will have been sorted out and settled by then) then perhaps

that's a sensible choice - I wouldn't agree tho.


3. There's nothing in WAP that prevents it taking advantage of the larger

screens of newer phones; I'd expect to see us get higher res phones with

colour screens soon, in line with Japan etc. WAP *is* a "micro-browser".

Expecting to browser web sites on a phone is not realistic - even if you

can technically display HTML on your phone's screen, it's not going to look

good or be particularly usable.


4. Content development for WAP and content development for any other means

of shifting information to a phone is the same: cut down, relevant, timely

info (or time-wasting apps). Implementing that content in WAP, as opposed

to cHTML, HDML or whatever, is much of a muchness: if you've developed your

app properly this'll be an easy thing to change/extend further down the

line.


Whether or not WAP is a long-term development route (and with all mobile

telcos in the UK unilaterally pushing it I think it's a reasonable bet that

it will still be around in a few years time) is, in a sense, irrelevant:

the WAP bit of a mobile application is a very thin layer, it's the

integration behind that and the thought that goes into creating something

appropriate for the medium that will take most of the effort.


Come on - someone mention Jakon Nielsen ;)



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