In many regions, the mobile phone is the primary tool for Web access. As mobile Web connections increase in developing nations the impact will be significant. This panel examines the differences between mobile Web access in developing and developed regions and how the mobile Web can affect social development.
Opera makes Web browsers for mobile phones.
20th anniversary of the initial founding of W3C. Take the Web world-wide and make it accessible to everyone.
Tech, entertainment, connecting are most important aspects.
Open Mobile Terminal Platform–initiative to de-fragment mobile access so that any widget will run on any device, potentially other devices–TVs, cars. Huge potential in developing countries. Doing in a royalty-free manner to accommodate world markets.
What do you see people doing with the mobile Web, and why is it interesting?
Matt: roughly a billion people use the Web, but leaves out a huge segment. 80% of the world’s pop has some form of mobile network coverage. The mobile Web should be the starting point from where we make it accessible to everyone.
Kofi: development of products has greatly increased. The accessibility of tech in general have allowed companies who aren’t based in Africa to see a channel in which they can innovate. Not the same as it is in the West. Standard ways of doing business, rolling out projects. Mobile allows a lot of research. Gives the company an idea of what the market is doing.
If people have access to a mobile phone, they have access to water. Have more access than through computers. Starting to see the platforms coming through, browsers having ability to give better mobile experience.
Many people use the mobile Web in the US. Look I have a shiny toy. In theory, I could browse the Web, but sit down at my desk. People in developing worlds don’t use computers because they don’t have power, but do have mobile network. Opera has a mini-platform for people who just want access to the Web. They don’t actually care that they have a mobile, it’s simply the only access.
How does that device allow you to live–work, make money, communicate. See people using the tools for purposes they weren’t originally meant for. When you try to implement . Necesseity allows for both developer and user to innovate.
Mobile is cheap to manufacture, more so than computer.
Many don’t even have a bank account. Travel 4 hours to the nearest place they can transfer money. Remote villages can access marketing information. What will we see in the future? We can learn new applications that we’ve never thought of before to meet diverse needs.
Discussion here about productization. Maybe products need to be designed for the circumstances people are in, rather than how many mobile phones can we sell? What about designing to the local situations rather than adapting to the marketplace.
Tuesday: Mobile for social good panel.
Develop for the Western market, and assume that it will be used in the same way or adapted when it goes overseas. It does not work. It doesn’t look good on the financials, for core consumers. Need to look at local cultures and customs. Uniqueness of emerging products is related to how the community grows or can grow. Develop products around that to be effective.
Create platforms so that people can self-sustain, and develop whatever they need or want. Trying to open up the platforms so they will be able to do that. Got to give people the tools to develop themselves. Currently a closed system–the bar is too high. Everything should be open, royalty-free for emerging markets.
If you don’t have something that suits what the markets need, they don’t buy it. Top applications in other countries are like Facebook. They are just living their lives, just want to connect.
Examples of actual services: mobile banking, health care information, agricultural marketing, plenty of examples of good appications.
Affects language and literacy issues. The idea is that you develop the platforms, allows people to think about what the possibilities are. Have to be keen on the experimental aspect.
Indian Railways Web site. Biggest in India. The next is a resource service, especially in agriculture. The biggest use today is social media. Anything to connect.
Everyone’s life has been affected by the Web. They want and need to connect with people. A huge aspect of their lives, just like ours. There is an amazing difference in the products people use, to get that connection.
Mobile as a browser, or data moving? It’s all the Web, not just functions. How-tos becoming more relevant. Many areas are dangerous. Create a network so that you can keep tabs on natural disasters, political unrest or violence, help governments get out information.
Local content is relevant as well. Devices that allow developing countries to develop their own local, relevant content.
Mobile=while I’m walking along. The distinction actually is fading fast. It’s becoming a continuum. When you have physically hostile environments. Dangerous neighborhoods, having a device with you makes a difference with what you can and will do with it.
Think about one Web, not a separate Web that’s mobile. Always going to have devices with different characteristics, people will use it in a variety of unexpected ways. One Web, all connected.
Bandwidth: internet access might be very weak. Thinking about low bandwidth unit coming to a particular device.
Text vs. Web. How do you get information to people who have only text access. There are products for emerging areas in development right now. People should have the option to be able to communicate, whether it’s text or Web. Simply develop in text. Applications should match the language and literacy. More important than access to Facebook. How can you affect text to allow community to grow? Lots of options for text, need to be explored.
Smart phone market is more proportionately needed in developing countries. Don’t want in the middle products–want the highest capability to get the best access. They will in turn pass it along to text-only users, creating different kinds of networks.
Focus should be on developing according to access in the actual location. People will share. Work with where you are, build services and products based on that.
One of the big problems is the back-haul between countries, not within countries.
Design challenges are not much different than developing 15 years ago.
Hardware & life cycle: brittle devices? open source applications? In developing countries you see devices used differently than here–a hairdryer to do something else. If you have very expensive components, or completely encased so they’re impossible to repair, will not be useful. Let’s have a standard firmware in the device, leave programming to free open source software.
People do a lot of repairing of phones, handed around, long lifecycle. They tend to take better care of device, learn how to repair device. Open hardware is great, if it’s cheaper. They care more about how it works, what it costs. Traditional research scientific model–reduces replication of work, but if someone can produce the same thing cheaper, people will buy the cheaper.
Widgets–Web applications that will run over any mobile phone. Widgets are hotted up bookmarks. There will be a move to do more mobile stuff in a Web browser. Easy to work, don’t have to pick devices or browsers. More careful thought about clean design. Will always be a place for specific applications–tuning of rendering, Most people don’t care about sub-pixel errors. All they care about is pictures a words on a page.
Current problem: heavy proprietary development: iPhone. They’ve been cracked. When the iPhone launched, there was no Web app store for the iPhone. Apps were all for computer browsers.
To do more business in developing areas, drop the cost down to zero. Putting out more stuff may make things better, but cheaper helps more people. Provide things people want, that will bring change to people’s lives. Sometimes even the big bad operations provide access, so not so bad.
Pricing and licensing done as they are in the US. This may be the entire salary of someone in Guatemala. Celltel, other telecoms base pricing on subscribers. In Africa, people share–so how do you price it? If there’s only one phone in an entire area? This is where people need to think more locally than globally. Do your research, how are people using it, how can you adapt? Include lifecycle, licences, etc. R
Regulators and big companies need to be thinking in terms of adaptation–how do they fit into the market? It’s an eternal process, because the market is dynamic, and people and their needs change.
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