Mmetrics have released an interesting little data snack from their smartphone user panels. The chart shows the top “mobile web” destinations in the US versus in the UK.
What’s interesting here is that five of the top ten web sites accessed from mobiles in the UK are carrier/operator sites, while the US list more closely resembles the top www sites list. There are the very consistant top three, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft (MSN) and only two carrier/operator sites in the US top ten list. I’ve asked this question of a number of people in the mobile applications, infrastructure and operator businesses, “Is the US consumers’ entry to mobile data services impacted by the very high PC peneration rate and previous web experience in the US versus Europe?” The answers have varied and granted one should not draw conclusions from this one data point, but it validates asking the question.
The label “mobile web” creates cognitive dissonance and confusion in the marketplace. Is there a separate web? The real answer should be no, and in fact, as one observes the growth and evolution of mobile data services in the US what strikes the chord of recognition and apparently adoption are those services familiar from our web experience which add a mobile specific UI and uniquely mobile VAS (value added service) to existing behaviors.
For example, Alltel’s award winning Celltop application ties web services into a UI which works on handsets and tiny screens. Note: Celltop awards are both industry and user bestowed.
Weather, news, sports scores, stocks and new ringtones/callback tones are services combined from the web and/or the carrier/operator presented in a handset specific UI. Alltel are also running polls to ask their users which web service they’d like to see offered next through Celltop. The options include a digg feed, Gmail, NASCAR updates or horoscopes. Sounds webilicious, no?
Another example is a personal favorite, Sprint Navigation by Telenav. I love this application.
Most of you have used Mapquest, Yahoo! Maps, Google Maps or some combination of web based mapping and navigation applications. Telenav brings web services behind maps and navigation along traffic information together with GPS and voice capabilities from the handset and mobile network. The result is a powerful personal navigation solution.
First, your actual location is determined via GPS, then you have the option to type or speak the address of your destination. This is where Telenav have done a superior job of integrating with native handset strength in functionality. Screen viewing to observe navigation instructions is supremely difficult at 80 mph on a California freeway. (This is an illustration not an admission of guilt in case the CHPS are listening.) So, Sprint Navigation allows placing a call from inside the application to an automated voice search facility which locates and confirms your destination address, then returns the handset to application state on completion of the call. Your route is calculated and finally the application checks a web traffic conditions service and either reports traffic is good or reroutes to your destination, if possible.
So great! You’ve got a route, traffic considered, and now to get there you need to view the directions. Well, not nessarily. The application repeats turn-by-turn instructions periodically via voice. Using your headset or speakerphone (safety first people) you will hear updated instructions until the turn is reached or you bypass it. If a turn is missed, the application automatically informs you and recalculates the directions. That’s user fault tolerant which I often need give I suffer BADD (blogger attention deficit disorder) which is far shorter and more easily distracted than ADD or ADHD.
Here are two excellent and well adopted applications which do all the things that we’ve been told at countless events and conferences are essential to a successful application, and more importantly, they are implemented extremely well.
- web functionality
- augment with handset mobile network strengths
- mobile specific UI - this might require multiple modalities (don’t ignore voice)
- user centric design and fault tolerant
Okay, maybe the list wasn’t presented exactly this way, but it should’ve been. To all those evangelizing “the mobile web,” please stop. And reset to evangelize web services on mobile devices.
I’ll continue to try and persuade you on this logic. Stayed tuned for the next article of the series: .mobi winners and losers.
Back to the Mmetrics findings. Well over half of the web browsing activity by smartphone users in the UK occurs on operator portals. Well over half of the web surfing activity by smartphone users in the US is through Google. It would be helpful to have a breakdown of the Google activity. Is that all search? How much is attributable to Gmail access? Data always raises more questions.
These findings also highlight another consideration when combined with the illustrations of web services in this article. What does it now mean to access the web from a mobile device? Are web services through thick clients merely a interim step on the path to fully functioning web browsers on mobile devices? I think not. Again, with the example of Sprint Navigation, it takes a handset application to weave handset functionality into a complete solution.
And finally what does it mean that smartphoners in the UK rely upon their operator portals for web browsing? Are the services offered by operators superior to those on the web? Is it habit? Or perhaps, the walled garden is simply more persistent in the UK than it is in the US.
November 25th, 2009 at 6:38 am
Very interesting article!!! In fact, i think the most recent developments in mobile applications will be unveiled at the Forum Nokia Conference at Bangalore next month. Looking forward to see some live demos at this big event.
August 8th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
The bias is, as has been mentioned, due to operators doing whatever they can to keep people ‘on portal’.
I’m fighting this by creating ‘the next best thing’ to having an operator-web-key; it’s a portal that’s almost as convenient and unforgettable as the single-key that operators hard-wire to their portals.
It’s on URL ‘da.gp’, which can be entered with keys 32147 on a standard phone keypad. Please see http://cms.da.gp for more info and get in touch if you want to help out!
July 20th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
I actually have three browsers on my phone.. the original pre web ‘n walk t-mobile browser, t-mobile’s opera browser with no personalisation options and opera mini which I can personalise.
Depending on how I access the mobile internet - via a downloaded app like gmail or mobizines, direct through opera mini or various links within the t-mobile/nokia operating system, I get taken to a different browser and I have no control over which one I get directed to.
Equally, I don’t necessarily want google as my home page either.
July 20th, 2007 at 12:13 am
Helen,
A major factor here may be that http://mobile.google.com gives the option of setting Google as one’s home page in the phone’s web browser. That’s what I’ve done.
Launching my browser on Sprint’s network, provides me with a list of Goog services:
Search
Maps (download java app)
Gmail (download java app)
Calendar
SMS
News
Photos
Blogger
Reader
Goog411;
instead of the operator portal. There is a link here for other countries including the UK. You might want to give it a try for the sake of experimentation.
And let me point out that this M:metrics data snack doesn’t claim to reflect overall usage, but only for smartphone users.
Give it a whirl. I find the access to Google Reader on my phone especially helpful for those brief moments when I can sneak in a quick check-in with the blogosphere.
I tend to be influenced by the characteristic pointed out by Denmark Kilo, “surfing the operator portal in the UK is free.” Free is a pretty powerful behavior shaper.
July 19th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
The UK operators’ trying to confine us to walled gardens, then trying to sting us for ridiculous charges, was, IMO, one of the biggest business blunders of our age. They didn’t seem to be able to grasp that we wanted the Internet - and all it has to offer - and not their crappy “services”: bloody ringtones, wallpapers, and pop music bollocks. You’d have thought they’d have learned their lesson from the experiences of AOL and Compuserve. It stifled what could have been a real boom. Even now that T-mobile and 3 have led the way with a more sensible pricing policy, and less blocking of certain protocols, the damage has been done because people have had such a poor experience in the past: “Mobile Internet? That’s just ringtones, wallpapers and pop music bollocks, isn’t it?”
July 19th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
I pondered this question too Debi and it’s actually quite simple.
I’m a t-mobile customer on web ‘n walk in the UK so I have the opera browser downloaded as part of that package. As soon as you click on the browser button to actively access the internet, t-mobile’s home page comes up as default.
If I use Opera Mini (which I installed myself), I don’t get any home page at all and I have to either click on one of my bookmarks or enter a URL to get to a page. I don’t know how many folks are interested enough to have downloaded Opera Mini unless they’re working in the industry or are geeky? So the status quo is to use the pre-installed settings which afford you one-click mobile web access.
So I’m not sure that these statistics are reflective of overall usage and could be highly skewed. I’d like m:metrics to explain more fully what exactly they’re measuring. And maybe for something like mobile web usage, they need a bigger sample size than 500 or so smartphone customers for it to be truly representative.
July 16th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
There’s also the question of laziness on the part of the user. People use the phone for downloading media for their handset, instead of using it much as a source of information. As in, people really just want to get ringtones, games, wallpapers (Cough…AdultStuff…COUGHcough) for their handset, and they occasionally read the news on the portal’s pages. Everything that they mostly want is provided for them within the walled garden.
According to the training I’ve recieved, there’s going to be more of an attempt to get people to look at other sites, such as mySpace, Youtube, et al. Heck, there’s even the “Google Enhanced” search box when you go into Live! as well. I’m doubtful that many would do such a thing, considering I can walk into an internet cafe and spend 30-40 minutes surfing the net properly for the same cost as a single megabyte’s worth of data transfer.
Oh, and just to make things more fun, some clever person decided to do something about normal websites. Namely attempting to render them in such a way on the phone that people can actually see things semi-properly. A move away from the mobile specific pages.
Thankfully no-one’s asked me about that yet. I still don’t quite get it myself…
July 16th, 2007 at 9:11 am
It will be interesting to watch for a change especially of Vodafone users to the new tariffs and their browsing habits. Operators offering free portal browsing certainly explains allot. Thanks for explaining that bit.
The know-how problem is a chicken and egg question, yes? There has to be a compelling reason for people to need to know how to leave. And in addition, leaving has to be as easy as getting onto the portal. Certainly, that has been the case for the evolution of the Internets.
July 14th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
As someone whom does work for Vodafone UK on the customer service side, more specifically for the prepay (Pay as you Talk) section, there may be another reason why the phone operators got so much traffic…
Vodafone changed their data charges recently, based on data usage. You’re looking around the £2 mark per megabyte of data transfer for PAYT users, no matter where you go (Vodafone Live! or the internet itself). Before the recent change, VF Live! was free to browse, but going out of Live! was charged at data rates. Of £7.50 per megabyte.
So yes, before the recent changes, you could access the internet itself. But you got kneecapped for it. So, people didn’t.
Also, from my own personal experience of dealing with PrePay customers, I don’t think many of them actually know HOW to leave the walled garden that is Live in the first place.
Why do I know?
Just… …trust me on that.
Really.