The history of the Mobile Web should really be the Mobile Anti-Web. The Web is OPEN and the Mobile Web has been CLOSED. Carrier Walled Gardens. Handset/OS maker controlled App Stores. Even browser companies with cross platform support - if you use their browser (what about the other 75% of the population). So is this the mobile Web or the Verizon Web, or the Apple Web? Maybe the Google, Blackberry, Ovi or Mozilla Web. What ever happened to just "The Web"?!
Well mobile Web services or Mobile SaaS is designed to open the Web to all mobile users, regardless of their device, OS or brand of browser. The only requirement for delivering a Web service is an HTTP connection and browser (not one that only connects back to the carrier's Web portal). The browser lets you connect to any Web site. It may or may not be formatted properly for mobile (or your browser), but you can access it (permissions permitting, of course).
Okay marketing, sales, service and biz dev folks - what if your Web service knew that a mobile device was knocking on the door? What if it new who was actually visiting, and where they were? What if the Web service knew the user's security permissions, their advertising preferences or whether or not their battery charge was strong enough to complete a download? What if the Web could know who, what and where about every mobile user? And what if it could know all of this without asking the user to type in or fill in the majority of this information (a real pain on those little keyboards). And what if the user (or business) could define with whom they were willing to share their information? Well, then you can personalize, localize and appropriately mobilize (or not) your Web services.
Well, that is what my company has been working on, delivering this contextual Who, What & Where data via the Web browser to the Web server for use in any Web service/Web application. We've been shipping Windows Mobile and Blackberry versions of our software for the past year, and now we have achieved true cross-platform support, successfully delivering this data from Symbian, Android and iPhone devices up to a Web server. You can check out these Web pages that "echo-back" the data being sent from the device to our little application that shows the arriving data. Take a look and think about how you could grow your business, increase productivity or gain a competitive advantage through the personalization, localization and mobilization of your Web services.
