Firstly let me apologise for the gap between the last blog and this one.  I have broken the first rule of social media and not blogged regularly and often so I must beware of the wrath of the social media guru and await my fate.  To mitigate my heinous crime I must plead to general busy-ness and overwork – an office move, Barcelona, expectant customers and multiple software releases that have all taken their toll.  However, I have to admit to being very, very angry!  Most of the talk in Barça concerned apps. – iPhone vs. Android vs. the Okey Cokey 2000.  These days you have to wade through tons of virtual media hype to get sensible ‘non-app’ comment.  To cap it all I had a meeting with a new customer who wanted to base his new, exciting and pre-revenue business around the iPhone.  I tried to remonstrate “You are spending millions on this business and you want to balance it on a device which has 2.7%, and descending, of a 3.5 billion device market.  Why?”, “But I love my iPhone” he said.

When will brand/community owners wake up to the fact that to get to these consumers they have to appeal to the masses and not restrict their target audience to a handful of the enlightened? Please feel free to correct me but is the mobile web, whilst not perfect, at least commercially viable and what is more, generally available to everyone with a ‘non steam driven’ phone.  So why not create applications for everyone that anyone with any phone can use.  “Well” I hear you say “you would have to create a new instance of your application for every smart phone”.

At this point I must advise the reader that, not only can we deploy fantastic looking applications at Mobestar but we develop once and deploy over a multiplicity of handsets. Will this capability make any difference to the headless chicken iPhone rush?  Probably not in all reality – but I do hope that in what’s left of my lifetime that businesses will adopt the mobile web and use it properly.  I hate to sound like the proverbial prophet in my own land – but Apple obsessed marketers please note that I did try to warn you.

Peter Richards – March 8th 2010