On his blog Mike Rowehl wrote Growing and Managing Off-Portal Communities, where he quotes Dave Harper:
“If it doesn’t work on 1 billion phones, don’t bother with it. No rich media experience, all through the browser.”
Interesting thought it is…
What if flip this? By this I mean, about rich (or thick) mobile clients leveraging services on the web, to make a “million” of non-rich services media rich…
Yes, of course that it won’t be millions of services consumed by a single client… but about delivering rich (media) experiences. About the local application on the edge of the network, with the help of the server, mashing up “simple” services into a rich experience — with the goal of delivering a higher user experience…
And I say local applications because (today) to maximize the handset capabilities and bring a rich user experience, local applications have the upper hand. Tomorrow it might be the mobile web, if it evolves as we hope it will; the iPhone’s approach to the Web, while not the ideal converged thin client with native functionality, gives us a hint of the potential.
Taking a million non-media rich services, and making them media-rich…
Related to this see Debi Jones’ Mobile Web – Just Say No!, where Debi makes the important point about of the role of web services on mobile applications (as consumed by thick clients) vs. purely thin web/browsing applications.
ceo