Hello, Half a Billion of Us Want the
Net via Phone
Mobile Web access is coming. Here's how you can prepare
By David Hayden
The number of mobile phone subscribers is projected to reach 500 million worldwide by
2003, and by that time 75 percent of all cellular phones will be Internet-enabled. Thanks
to the Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) and the Short Messaging Service (SMS),
mobile phone users can now access Internet content and services. That means Web
developers and content providers will need to deliver relevant, formatted content to a
variety of the second-generation "smart" phones that will come into widespread use over
the next few years.
The first step in building an effective Web site to
deliver content and services to smart phone users
is to understand that this is a very different
medium from the personal computer. Unlike PCs,
smart phones are, for the most part, strictly
text-based. Most have no more than four-line
displays (some of the larger screens show eleven
lines).
In addition, the experience level and tolerance for
complexity of the average mobile phone user is far
less than a PC user. In fact, some studies show
that for every key press that is required for a
particular function, the use of that feature is
reduced by 50 percent. Surprisingly, only 5
percent of mobile phone subscribers use voice
mail for this very reason. While the new mobile
phones can accommodate text formatted in just
about any way, from a usability standpoint the
formatting and user interface define how useful
delivered content will be.
It is also important to understand the limitations of
the technology, and the cellular data infrastructure
in general. For example, SMS transmissions are
generally limited to between 100 and 160
characters. Any content that exceeds these limits
will either be truncated or split into several
messages. Also, because users will normally be
charged for the airtime or for the amount or
frequency of data being sent, special consideration
must be made to keep the cost down for the user.
Finally, the fluctuating delivery time of SMS
messages and coverage issues must be considered
when deciding what data to deliver.
The best way to get up to speed with Web
development for smart phones is to prototype a
simple site and test it on a WAP emulator. The
undisputed leader in the WAP browser market is
Phone.com. Phone.com, formerly Unwired
Planet, helped define the WAP browser standard
and built a product around this definition, along
with a gateway server for the back end. To
encourage developers to create WAP-compatible
applications, Phone.com offers a free software
development kit, downloadable from its Web site,
as well as a free developer's program. Because
it's the de facto standard, the SDK ensures
compatibility with the largest number of mobile
phones. The developer's site includes discussion groups, training classes, and other
resources.
Phone.com offers training courses in HDML (Handheld Device Markup Language) and
WML (Wireless Markup Language) approximately every six weeks. Books and
CD-ROMs are available for developers who can't take the courses on location in the San
Francisco Bay Area or who prefer to learn on their own. In addition to Phone.com's own
materials, a book entitled "The Official Wireless Application Protocol: The Complete
Standard With CD-ROM" is available from John Wiley & Sons. This comprehensive
guide provides detailed development information.
Once you install the Phone.com SDK, you can begin to prototype using Visual C++ or
Visual Basic. To publish and test the example applications, you will need a Perl
interpreter (version 5.x or greater).
The next step is to begin surgery on your existing Web site?or create a WML/HDML
site from scratch. How you design your site will depend a great deal on whether this site
will be accessed primarily from a mobile phone or from a PC. Creating HDML and
WML pages requires creating small sections of a page that can be viewed from a mobile
phone. If PC users will also view the page, you can create dynamic, graphics-rich pages
for viewing on traditional PC-based browsers while still enabling support for WAP
phones.
As a pioneer, you will find developing Web pages for WAP-based mobile phones can be
time-consuming and complicated. However, new Web development tools and extensions
to existing tools will soon simplify this process. A slew of HTML-to-WML/HDML
converters are expected to be available soon.
The content portals, such as Yahoo and America Online, are among the first to deploy
this technology. Yahoo acquired Online Anywhere to help realize the vision of Yahoo
Everywhere, while America Online has outlined its plans for AOL Anywhere to provide
Internet-based content via handheld computers, mobile phones, and set-top boxes. The
early results of these initiatives have led to Yahoo licensing content to Sprint PCS for
Sprint's Wireless Web service for mobile phones. Sprint PCS customers equipped with a
WAP-enabled mobile phone can now get news, sports, weather, e-mail, and a host of
other content. AOL recently announced it will provide instant messaging capabilities to
Motorola's next-generation smart phones and pagers.
For developers who plan to roll out WML/HDML- or SMS-based content to users of
mobile phones and other wireless devices, such as the Palm VII, there are a variety of
products designed to perform content reformatting.
AvantGo, a company that has been providing reformatted content such as The Wall
Street Journal, The New York Times, and USA Today to users of Palm and Windows
CE handheld computers, is now entering the wireless space. It offers a server product,
Enterprise 3.0, that enables companies to provide content to a mobile work force.
Enterprise 3.0 is currently only available for the Palm and Windows CE platforms, but a
version supporting WAP should be released soon. Enterprise 3.0 provides little in the
way of content conversion, but it does provide a specification on how data should be
formatted, and it provides the infrastructure to deliver HTML data.
Puma Technology, the recognized leader in synchronization software, recently
announced an intent to merge with ProxiNet, maker of the ProxiWeb Internet access
software for Palm devices. With this merger, Puma's primary focus will be to provide
server software to companies that want to deliver Internet-based content to mobile phone
users. The products produced by this combined entity should result in an extension of
Puma's Intellisync Anywhere product, which is expected to offer on-the-fly content
conversion to mobile phones and handheld computers. The current pricing model is
based on the number of users and ranges between $180 and $360 per user. For more
than 100 users, Puma quotes custom pricing.
Riverbed Technologies plans to introduce ScoutWeb, which it says offers "a powerful
platform for building and deploying Internet-enabled solutions," sometime this quarter.
ScoutWeb will match richly formatted Web content to the capabilities and screen size of
all mobile device browsers (i.e., WAP phones) on the fly "without the need for
proprietary software on the mobile device," according to Riverbed. Although pricing has
yet to be announced, the company is expected to adopt a pricing model similar to
Puma's?somewhere between $150 and $200 per user.
ScoutWeb uses technology licensed from Spyglass. Spyglass, one of the first companies
to commercialize a Web browser (which it then licensed to Microsoft), developed a
technology known as Prism for on-the-fly conversion.
Whether you are developing Web content for smart phones from scratch or plan to utilize
one of the many server platforms that do much of the complex work for you, plenty of
resources are available. So far, very few Web sites adhere to the WML/HDML
standards, but this will become a mainstream requirement as the WAP platform takes
hold.
The savvy developers who support the platform early on will reap the rewards of being
first to market.
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