(keitai-l) Re: T-mobile to abandon mobile portal?

From: Curt Sampson <cjs_at_cynic.net>
Date: 07/02/05
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.62.0507021701170.6081@angelic.cynic.net>
On Fri, 1 Jul 2005, John Whelan wrote:

> I assume this is based on the fact that most big screen users set a
> search engine as their home page.

Is that indeed a fact? I find it surprising, since in my entire office
there's not a single person who sets google as a home page. And to do so
would be a bit redundant with some browsers, such as Mozilla or Firefox,
since you can use your search engine of choice from an input box in the
toolbar.

Anyway, what is your source for this fact?

> Fixed and mobile web browsing are fundamentally different: mobile is about
> info snacking not "surfing". What Is really needed is the radical and
> disruptive approach as offered by Tribes - but I would say that see
> www.alatto.com.

I completely disagree. They're not so different at all; the one big
difference is that mobile pages need a lot less stuff on them because
the screen is smaller, the page size has a relatively small limit, and
the download speed is much slower. But I want the same pages I get with
fixed browsing, just with a lot less "chrome."

And I'm getting really tired of being told what I want. I think
everybody else is, too; thus the success of Docomo and other Japanese
carriers, who basically just gave you the web, versus the European
carriers, who didn't.

And that's what T-Mobile has finally clued into, and is finally doing.
The point of using Google is not so much for search (though it is one
of the best search engines out there--why you think it's the wost for
mobile stuff I don't know) but because Google has this fantastic ability
to strip off all of the stupid chrome on web pages designed for PC
browsers and give me the content in a readable way on my mobile device.

And I don't know about alatto, but I can't imagine that any company that
makes it that hard just to figure out what the heck their product is is
going to make a product itself with a decent UI. The first two minutes
of their flash demo has zero information content; I gave up watching
it because I was just wasting my time. So much for a company that's
supposed to make browsing better!

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson  <cjs@cynic.net>   +81 90 7737 2974

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Received on Sat Jul 2 11:25:09 2005