Mobile Mondays dedicated its latest event in Madrid to Mobile Internet Platforms, where my good friend Alex Romero from Yahoo! presented their vision of Mobile Internet.
Mobile Internet is finally coming. Unlimited data plans and high speeds (HSDPA, EVDO) are finally enabling it. Although most 3G data traffic is still associated to Wireless Broadband, new devices as iPhone and Android are making the mobile web experience far better than ever before.
So with full browsers in the handsets, is there anything specific about Internet in mobile? For many developers of mobile apps for Android, iPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile or Blackberry the answer is yes. If usability is important for any application in a computer, in a handset, usability is crucial due to limitations such as a smaller display, or less comfortable inputs (text or navigation). In smaller devices any click saved makes a difference. That is why applications for mobile must be smarter and be context aware (know about location, user profile, friends in social networks, time of the day, weather, personal agenda, you name it), so that clicks can be saved.
Yahoo! oneSearch is an example of a different approach to Search, specific for Mobile: Provide relevant answers instead of web links. Do the examples in the oneSearch picture above save clicks? Would you use oneSearch on your iPhone, even if you can fully search in its Safari browser?
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