Over the past few weeks, we have seen how the mobile Internet can be a very compelling opportunity in emerging markets like India. There are three challenges that need to be addressed: publishing, viewing and the business model. We will discuss each of them this week.
Publishing is important because there is a paucity of content that is mobile-friendly. Unless the creation of the content is addressed, it will be hard to get users. This is similar to the challenge faced on the Web in its early days. The use of HTML and proliferation of publishing tools created a cottage industry for content creation. Something similar needs to happen around the mobile.
Publishing for the mobile can be split into two making available static content (which doesn’t change often) and dynamic content (the incremental web, as we discussed last week). Static content will either need to be repurposed for the mobile if it already exists or it will need to be created. In the first case, the combination of creating a sitemap which is easily navigable on the mobile with links to the HTML pages transcoded for the mobile is the way to do. In the second case, publishing tools like a blogging platform, a wiki or an outliner can be used to create content for the mobile. In both cases, the publishing is likely to be done via a PC rather than a mobile.
The dynamic (or incremental) content can be published via a blogging tool. This creates RSS which users can subscribe to. The advantage of using a blogging platform for the incremental content is that it is makes publishing easy. There are other ways to publish SMS or multimedia from the phone itself can be thought of as the incremental content. In all cases, the use of a blogging platform as the backend can help in organising of the incremental content.
There will also be the need to take deep databases (eg. in finance, cricket, yellow pages) and make them available on the mobile in a manner that makes navigation easy. The good thing is that a lot of this content is already available for the PC-based Internet. Content owners should consider creating mobile versions of their sites. We have seen some newspapers and magazines create mobile sites a lot more needs to happen rapidly.
The next step will be to enable the creation of user-generated content, and foster communities. The MySpace of India will need to be built around the mobile rather than the PC. The time that the youth have with their mobiles is significantly greater than the time spent on a PC. Mobile communities will help accelerate the uptake of the mobile Internet.
Tomorrow: Viewing
TECH TALK: Mobile Internet+T
