Opportunities and Challenges of Web Technologies on Mobile Platform
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Outline
- The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
- Potential of Web technologies on Mobile phones
- Challenges
- Organization and Structure of the MWI
- Future Work: The Mobile Web to bridge the Digital Divide
Overview of W3C
- International Standardisation Organization
- Consortium of 450+ members from industry, academic, research,...
- Neutral/non-for-profit
http://www.w3.org/
W3C: Leading the Web to its Full Potential
Founded by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee in 1994
...
- W3C Vision: Universal Web Access: The Web Anywhere, for
Everyone, at Anytime, on Everything :
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- 1994: Creation of W3C for standardization and
interoperability of Web technologies
- 1997: Creation of the Web Accessibility
Initiative (WAI): To make the Web Accessible
- 2005: Creation of the Mobile Web Initiative
(MWI): To Access the Web from Mobile Phones
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W3C goals on Mobile Platform
- Make the Web more Universal
- Ensure that mobile users are first class Web citizen
- Prevent fragmentation of the Web between mobile and desktop
Potential of Web Browsing on Mobile
A significant proportion of subscribers have terminals enabled for
browsing. The active user population is rapidly growing, and despite the
downward pressure on prices, mobile browsing is a strong revenue
generator.
Source: W3C-MWI/Nokia
Mobile Browsing Growth Outpaces Other Services
Active users of mobile browsing services will increase by about 30%
annually between 2006 and 2010, significantly more than the use of
advertising, ringtones, SMS and other entertainment and media - even higher
than subscriber growth
CA GR = compound average growth rate
Source:W3C-MWI/Nokia
Service/Content Providers
- Offer an abstraction layer from
- the network operators
- the handset manufacturers
- Decrease the cost of content/service creation and maintenance
- Make all other strengths of the Web available
- Discoverability
- Easy development and deployment
- Enhanced interactions (forms, voice, multimodal, AJAX, ...)
Challenges
Source: RusselBeattie.com
Challenges (2)
- How to write Web content to fit with the diversity?
- What are the characteristics of the phone loading my content?
- How to help browser makers to fit with the diversity and implement Web
standards correctly ?
- Discoverability of mobile friendly web site?
The Mobile Web Initiative
- Launched in May 2005
- 3 Technical Working Groups
- Best Practices Working Group
- Mobile Web Best Practices (read the
flipcards)
- MobileOK trustmark
- Device Description Working Group
- Improve access to device description information
- Standard API to Device Description Repositories
- Test Suites Working Group (future: MobileOK for Software?)
- Driven by the MWI Steering Council
Who's Involved?
20 Sponsors:
- WG Participants: AOL, France Telecom, Google, Microsoft, mTLD, Nokia,
NTT DoCoMo, Opera, Samsung, SK Telecom, T-Online, Telefonica, Vodafone,
...
OMA Liaison
- Have general Liaison between OMA and W3C
- Example: Collaborating on converging
- XHTML Basic/MP
- CSS Mobile Profile/WCSS
- Goal: Single mobile spec from W3C
- OMA invited to all MWI Steering Council calls
- ...
Take-Up of Best Practices: Examples
- Referenced in Developer Material
- Integrated into Development tools
"mobileOK" Conformance Mark
- mobileOK Basic
- defines a series of tests for Web content
- based on subset of Best Practices
- machine-testable
- in "last call" - open for comments
- mobileOK
- includes non-machine testable tests
- still under development
- Third-party or self-certification
Joining the work now
- Following the MWI and participating in the public mailing-list
- Becoming W3C Member and joining MWI Working Groups
- Becoming MWI Sponsors and driving MWI through the Steering Council
Next Step: the Web for All
- 2007: W3C MWI to explore how the Web on mobile phones could be a
potential solution to bridge the Digital Divide and leverage Web access
in Developing Countries
ICT to sustain development
 |
- Government Services
- Education
- Health
- Banking
- Communities services
- Business
- ...
|
| (Photo Source: Der
Spiegel) |
How to provide access to ICT?
- With cheap laptops and mesh networking: One Laptop Per Child?
- With specific/special phones: Microsoft FonePlus?
- With the Mobile Web:
- Taking advantage of the existing 2.4+billion of mobile phones
- Taking advantage of the GSM cover (80% of the world population)
- Taking advantage of the adoption and use of Mobile applications
- Overcoming the current limitations
Today: SMS Applications
 |
- Successful Mobile Applications
- Banking
- NGOs-run SMS based system: e-gov, business (market poll),
health, ...
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- But few problems:
- Interoperability problems
- Discoverability of services
- limited interaction
- costly/inappropriate infrastructure
- no standardized development kit
|
| (Photo Source: Vodafone) |
Tomorrow?
- The Mobile Web: the platform to leverage services development,
deployment and adoption:
- No interoperability problems
- Discoverability through portals and search engine
- Enhanced interaction through forms/voice/multimodal interaction
- Cheap/free hosting
- Standardized technologies and development platform
W3C Roadmap
- Building the right community
- Enabling the Mobile Web
- Defining the minimal characteristics of a Web browser to be largely
deployed
- Identifying the usability factors and how to take them into account
- Working on the guidelines on how to deliver Mobile Web Applications
to under-privileged populations and rural communities
- Building local capacities
- Setting up a Mobile Web Applications curriculum
Conclusion
- The Mobile Web is an incredible opportunity for all actors of the
Mobile sector
- In the Developed World, as a business potential
- In the Developing World as the most promising way to bridge the
Digital Divide
- The challenges are currently tackled by the W3C Mobile Web
Initiative
Come and get involved in W3C work !
