The mobile industry has been given until August 28, 2006 as a ‘Sunrise’ period for companies to register their trade and service marks as domain names. After this date, the .mobi address goes on general release.
The growth of internet-ready mobile telephones and the frustration of users that find websites are designed for PC web access, and not the limited screen and navigational capabilities of a mobile telephone, was the catalyst for the industry to work together and agree on the use of open standards to service this sector of the market.
Today, if you are using an internet-ready mobile telephone there are only a small number of sites designed for the device, and these are often difficult to find. Therefore, by registering all content designed for the capabilities of mobile telephones under one top level domain (TLD) name, users can trust that any site ending in .mobi will be compatible with their mobile device.
Estimates vary for the number of mobile devices used to connect to the internet, but a conservative figure is that by 2008 there will be 1.3 billion worldwide. Therefore, servicing this market with content designed for a user ‘on-the-go’ has significant commercial potential. Consider the business traveler who needs to find the latest information on flights, hotel accommodation, or stock market prices while en-route. A laptop is useful, but requires the user to stop, unpack, connect, and then access the information; this is not always convenient, whereas accessing the information on the move from a mobile phone would be.
A Dublin, Ireland-based company named Mobile Top Level Domain (mTLD) is leading the development of internet usage from mobile devices by switching on the .mobi domain name. As a specialist domain name provider, mTLD ensures that services and sites developed around .mobi are optimized for use by mobile devices.
mTLD has worked with the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) mobile web initiative (MWI) to produce a set of open standards that leading mobile telephone manufacturers can adopt to ensure these websites have the same look and feel from any mobile telephone. mTLD has already issued temporary domain names to Newbay, Nokia, Google, TIM, Vodafone, and the Weather Channel, among others, to demonstrate the improved reliability of downloading .mobi web content on mobile devices.
A quick look at the nokia.mobi and google.mobi sites reveals a number of benefits. For example, the site address does not need to be prefaced with www, which can be problematic to input on a mobile phone. Other significant differences are the simpler navigation, only requiring the use of the up or down key, and the easy-to-read screen – all information is clearly displayed with no left or right scrolling required.
Ultimately, the success of dot.mobi will depend on the content providers producing websites that attract and retain the interest of internet-ready mobile telephone users.
Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)
