It's time for e-business to get moving

At the Thinking Digital IT conference held at the Sage centre in Gateshead last month, attendees heard from a wide variety of experts about the future of the mobile web and the business benefits of social media and collaboration. Yet amid the optimism about the potential for these technologies to transform the way we work and the opportunities they offer firms to expand their web footprint, some speakers warned that Web 2.0 tools could put a drain on productivity.

Delegates at the annual event, which was hosted by digital innovations agency Codeworks, heard how flat-rate tariffs, greater interoperability and new technologies have spurred the second coming of the mobile web.

“This is the second chance for everyone to deliver on the promise of the late 1990s,” said mobile strategist and ex-O2 executive Bradley de Souza. “Then, it was premature from a technology perspective, the marketing didn’t line up with what was being delivered and, although there was collaboration from the developer community, the stars didn’t align.”

Mark Selby, vice president of sales and industry collaboration at Nokia, argued that the operators’ walled garden approach to browsing is also collapsing, leading to greater uptake of the mobile web. Data usage on smartphones is nearing 90 per cent of total usage, he added.

“Our research shows that the amount of time people are browsing, accessing and uploading content is incredible,” Selby said.

Good content is vital to the success of the mobile web, according to other experts. Vikesh Patel, European general manager for products at Motorola, said that uptake will rocket “if you get the content right and people want it”.

“There are a lot of people [in the industry] with different opinions,” Patel added. “The network operators don’t want to be just bit pipes, but it really needs developers to feed the ecosystem to grow it.”

De Souza argued that mobile platform providers and other stakeholders need to be more open to facilitate and encourage the developer community.

“On the Symbian platform, the developers can’t even get their test apps on to users’ phones to gauge their usability,” he said. “Microsoft has done well to [encourage openness], but it’s not well structured.”

Recent research released by analyst firm Forrester supports the view that the mobile web is finally taking off, giving firms a perfect opportunity to expand their web presence.

The report, Mobile Internet Users Lead In Advanced Mobile Services’ Adoption In Europe, found that the proportion of internet-enabled phones has increased from just over 40 per cent in 2003 to 95 per cent in 2007. While 14 per cent of users currently use the mobile internet regularly, this figure will increase to over a third by 2013, according to the report.

Pete Nuthall, Forrester analyst and report author, argued that the mobile internet has now reached a tipping point in terms of take-up, and that businesses should be encouraged to enter the channel on the back of location-based services and mobile widgets.

“However, m-commerce is still some time off; people just don’t have that behaviour on their mobiles at the moment, although this could change in three to five years,” he added.

Unsurprisingly, the report also found a direct correlation between the frequency of mobile internet use and the use of advanced internet services such as mobile IM, email and social networking. Twenty per cent of users expressed an interest in mobile access to social networking sites, while 16 per cent were interested in blogging on the move, Forrester found.

Other experts at the event were less sanguine about the impact of the mobile web, warning that it could lead to problems for IT managers in terms of managing workforce access to sites and ensuring productivity levels of mobile staff are not reduced.

David Perry, a director at mobile data management firm Cognito, argued that firms should “recognise the competitive advantage of leveraging social networks in a business context”. However, he noted that it was essential for firms to put clear policies in place to show where the limits of personal usage of the mobile internet on corporate devices lie.

Mickael Remond, chief executive of enterprise IM firm Process One, argued that firms are also beginning to explore the benefits of web-based corporate micro-blogging technology as a way of collaborating on the move.

Modelled on SMS text technology, these blogs are about 150 characters long and can be built on existing messaging platforms, he explained. “The way we try to promote it is by showing it is something that can complement a firm’s existing IM platform,” said Remond. “It’s another way of publishing and sharing information.”