Content providers and big-name brands soon will be able to target consumers with a new Internet domain exclusively for wireless use.
For some industry insiders, though, the question is, why?
Mobile Top Level Domain Ltd. (mTLD) said it will launch the .mobi domain next month, selling the suffix to companies looking to build mobile-exclusive Internet destinations. Companies with trademarked brands can register .mobi sites for 90 days beginning May 22; generic domain names will become available in September.
The Ireland-based firm is a joint venture founded by Microsoft Corp., Nokia Corp. and Vodafone Group plc. Other investors include L.M. Ericsson, the GSM Association, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and T-Mobile.
MTLD is backing the effort with guidelines designed to ensure the wireless Web sites are accessible and can be viewed easily on the small screens of mobile phones, according to Chief Executive Officer Neil Edwards.
“Many existing Internet sites are grounded in desktop PC-oriented services and were not designed with a mobile phone in mind, which has led to less-than-ideal performance for consumers,” Edwards said at CTIA Wireless 2006 in Las Vegas earlier this month. “The .mobi sites are tailor-made for browsing and navigating on the mobile phone, making a far better experience.”
Indeed, surfing the wireless Web can be painful. Sites that don’t support handsets often get lost in translation from PC to wireless, resulting in an indecipherable mess of text and graphics. And accessing sophisticated Web pages can cause download problems, overwhelming a phone’s limited memory and becoming impossible to navigate.
The solution, according to mTLD, is a suffix that signals to users that a site is wireless-friendly.
Analysts say problems surrounding the mobile Web are quickly being addressed, however. Some site operators use technology that detects when a mobile users is accessing a site-even determining what type of device is being used-and can tweak content accordingly. Google Inc., AOL L.L.C. and others have built transcoding software that reformats Web sites a subscriber accesses through their search services. And third-party browsers like those offered by Novarra Inc. and Opera Software ASA allow users to access almost any Internet site, resizing Web pages for wireless screens.
“The basic question is, if you can make .com sites work (on mobile phones), why would you add an additional domain name?” asked Louis Gump, vice president of mobile at The Weather Channel Interactive. While not an investor in mTLD, The Weather Channel has committed to offering a .mobi destination-despite the fact that the company’s .com site includes detection and transcoding technology.
The effort could also help smaller companies, Gump noted, that may not have the resources to use device-detection technology or to build mobile-specific sites. MTLD plans to take advantage of the growing number of user-generated wireless sites, offering .mobi to mobile bloggers. Edwards predicts .mobi may claim as many as 1 million Web sites by the end of 2007.
Others offer a more sobering outlook for mTLD. Roger Entner, vice president of wireless telecoms for research firm Ovum, has compared the introduction of .mobi to “somebody coming out with a Ford Model T” today.
As high-tech phones with sophisticated browsers continue to gain market share, the .mobi tag will become increasingly irrelevant, Entner believes. “These (new) devices are very powerful in terms of computing capabilities; they can look at regular Web sites and work just fine.” Not only is the suffix unnecessary, some argue, it could lead to confusion among consumers about which sites to access from which devices.
But while many predict disappointing sales for MTLD, media companies and others seem to be hedging their bets. In addition to its well-heeled backers, several noted companies have signed on to build .mobi sites. Opinions may vary on the potential of a mobile-exclusive domain, but it seems nobody wants to pass up a .mobi site only to watch the effort take off.
“I’ve spoken with a large number of people on this topic, and the opinions span the entire range, from `This is one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard’ to `This is the single most important step”‘ in bringing the Internet to wireless users, The Weather Channel’s Gump said. “Personally, I’m convinced they have a very strong chance of success.”
