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Open standards, business value and cool apps could hasten the mobile-Web future

An IBM study released in May revealed that—hold onto your hats—people like options. More precisely, 80 percent of consumers would prefer a mobile service provider that gave them more choice in the applications and services devices support. It might seem like stating the obvious to say that grown-ups like to make their own decisions, but by applying this rule to mobile communications, IBM revealed trends with deeper implications for consumers and business.

The mobile Web’s impending popularity could combine the ubiquity and convenience of cell phones with the revolutionary information-sharing abilities of the Internet, and that has some folks justifiably excited. “Because the mobile device is personal, it has other features, like it has a portable display, it has a camera, it has location-based services where it could tell where you’re standing right now,” says IBM Solution Architect Mahmood S. Ashek, who specializes in mobile applications, Web 2.0 and user experience. “Leveraging those, you can create the new age of applications that you could not think of even, in the desktop environment.”

Developers and mobile providers are thinking of these applications—unfortunately they’re not all thinking together. Lots of mobile devices support Web surfing, but each has its own browser, unique capabilities and proprietary software. That’s where open standards come in. They could provide the flexibility mobile consumers demand. “What happened with desktop is, we got really stuck with Windows,” Ashek says. “People were so accustomed to Windows they didn’t want to move away from that. But mobile is a new game, right?”

Ashek praises initiatives like the Open Handset Alliance, a collaborative effort among some mobile operators, handset manufacturers, software makers and others dedicated to creating Android, an extensible, Linux-based, open-source operating system for mobile phones. A preview of Android’s software-development kit is available online and commercial offerings of handsets running Android are expected later this year.

Enterprise Applications

In the pending mobile Web revolution, IT professionals have two ways to make mobile work for their companies: make enterprise applications portable and expand mobile conveniences to consumers.

For business users, this might mean sending real-time task assignments to employees via company-issued mobile devices outfitted with the application’s user interface. End users could reply to the mother system with notifications and feedback.

But some of the most revolutionary mobile-Web enterprise applications might be for businesses that lack data centers—or even desktop computers. Mobile-Web applications could help a rural dairy farmer in Bangladesh get a fair price for milk, for example. When rich, Web-based business applications reach cell phones—the capillaries of 21st-century communications—remote entrepreneurs who can’t afford desktop equipment could benefit from global, real-time information.

It might be counterintuitive, but Ashek says developing countries are hungry for mobile-Web innovation. “You know IBM did well last year in terms of its performance. And if you look at that performance, why’d it do so well? IBM has gotten significant revenue increase in countries like Brazil, Russia, India, China. And now, this year IBM is looking one step further into those emerging countries. IBM is looking into countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia, countries in Africa. If you look at those countries right now, you’ll see that they have larger mobile penetration than countries like the U.S. The U.S. has about 80 percent but those countries have 90 to 95 percent mobile.”

Jetpacks and Airlocks

Enterprise apps are useful, but consumer applications likely will create the most buzz surrounding the mobile Web, because they’re irresistibly futuristic. For example, IBM is working with airlines on projects that could allow passengers to check into airports using mobile phones, according to Askek. In lieu of a printed boarding pass, a bar code readable by scanners at security and gates could appear on a phone’s display. To ensure the application works with as many types of phones as possible, a behind-the-scenes database of device capabilities would help the application adapt to each user’s hardware. Similar applications could allow travelers to check into hotel rooms, unlock doors and redeem coupons at casinos or restaurants, all without visiting the front desk. Phones’ location-awareness functions could give hotel staff clues about which rooms are vacant for cleaning.

Further down the line, near-field communication could turn mobile phones into digital wallets. These capabilities could become widespread among consumers around 2012, according to research released in June by Strategy Analytics and ABI Research. The technology could let users authorize payments to vending machines, stores, transit systems and even other end users, Ashek says. “You can also know when your friends are near you and you can meet up with them. Or you can walk into a shopping mall and your favorite store knows that you’re in the mall and they say, hey, this item is on sale. So there’s a lot of opportunities.”

Sound a little creepy? It all comes back to consumer choice. “Users must have the choice of turning those things off,” he explains. Convenient but potentially intrusive applications are nothing new—he compares them to similar features on social networking sites like Facebook. “That doesn’t mean you’re not gonna use Facebook. Facebook just needs to give you those choices.”