Vodacom tried an interesting move and pre-format Web pages for their subscribers’ cellphones in South Africa. Unfortunately they like everybody else ran into problems by transforming Web Content into Mobile Content.

The results are quite funny and it’s amazing that companies like Vodacom don’t fully test the system. The South African Internet Society statet the following:

““Various applications that include instant messaging, banking, specialised mobile applications such as e-mail, YouTube, Twitter, Fring and at least a dozen others, are no longer working,”

1.5billion pageviews on a mobile is “pretty sick”:

Top 10 mobile sites in the U.S.

1. www.myspace.com
2. www.google.com
3. www.mocospace.com
4. www.yahoo.com
5. www.facebook.com
6. www.live.com
7. www.hi5.com
8. www.wikipedia.org
9. www.itsmy.com
10. www.ebay.com

Metro UK has a great article about the future of the mobile web:

“According to a new report from Juniper Research, the increasing popularity of social networking sites, instant messaging and user-generated content will see the current figure of 577 million worldwide users triple by 2013.

The research suggests that the fall of so-called ‘walled gardens’ of content controlled by the network operators will lead to increased take-up of what they call mobile web 2.0.

“The mobile web 2.0 market is still nascent and business models remain in a state of flux, so there is still time for players to establish fruitful partnerships that build on their strengths and are reciprocally beneficial. The window of opportunity, however, is closing,” said Ian Chard, Juniper Research Analyst and author of the report.”

A few interesting numbers  and Iphone Apps from todays Businessweek article “Moving to the Mobile Web“:

- The Iphone has sold 5.4 million times

- 17,000 sites or “Web applications” are optimized for the device.

- The Ifund has received 2,000 plans, 20 times more than they typically receive for the mobile space

- Iphone Apps

A survey from Opera revealed the following:

“A survey commissioned by the browser outfit Opera claims that it is mostly men who use the interweb from their mobile phone.  More than 83% of men use their mobiles to browse, in comparison to 16% of women.”

I guess Perez Hilton doesn’t need to publish his wisdom on the mobile web. Not sure if this is a bad thing?

Gizmodo has a great article about IPhone clones or Phones that have the same UI as an Iphone:Instinct, Vu, Voyager, and Glyde.

All mobiles have great features, but none of these phones seem to have good mobile web capabilities:

“One thing they all have in common is a shitty browser. There isn’t a mobile browser that touches mobile Safari yet. Even when they could render HTML correctly, moving and zooming around the page (especially ones that aren’t mobile optimized) is an exercise in self-control—how long can you take it before stabbing your eyes out. Opera mini does load on the Vu, and it’s better than the included browser, but it worked kinda wonikly at times. For me, that’s a critical flaw in all of these phones.”

I really wonder why this happened. Are the operators afraid of the slowness of their network or how come none of these clones work good for the mobile web? Anybody an idea?

It’s fun to optimize wap sites if you have “only” to deal with 1117 mobile devices.  Just found the world’s largest Mobile Device database over at Punchkick Interactive’s marketing blog.

Great article today in USA today about the Mobile web: Race is on for Mobile Web’s pot of gold.

Here a few quotes:

”

And growing all the time. The global population expands by three people a second, according to International Data Base, an arm of the U.S. Census. In the same second, 38 wireless devices will be sold. At that rate, within 24 months another billion devices will be added to the 2.5 billion currently in circulation.

Meantime, the “mobile Web” — shorthand for browsing the Internet with a mobile device — is gaining steam. Pushing the trend is a flood of new smartphones and other wireless devices that make surfing on the run a snap. “In five years, the wireless Internet will be bigger than the desktop Internet,” predicts Rajeev Chand, a senior wireless analyst at Rutberg & Co., an investment bank in San Francisco.”

Entire article here