About this time last year my first post was published on One Degree about the growing popularity of mobile in Canada. The stats looked promising for marketers looking to test or incorporate mobile into their marketing mix – although most tests were SMS based.
What a difference a year makes.
Since publishing that first article, Canadians have not only continued their torrid adoption of SMS (CWTA will release stats this week showing we are on pace to double last year’s output to 20 billion) but they now have access to the iPhone, Blackberry Bold, Palm Centro, Samsung Instinct, Nokia N95 and many other next generation devices with fantastic mobile web browsers – which means mobile web access is here for the masses.
Last week I wrote a piece about user behaviour and motivators of the mobile web user – but what about all of you who still don’t understand the difference between the “desktop” web and the “mobile” web?
Go buy or borrow a copy of Mobile Internet for Dummies from Wiley Publishing.
Co-authored by local mobile evangelist Michael O’Farrell, this reference book is an easy read that has something for everybody – even those who can already find their mobile browser without asking a niece, nephew or local paper boy.
I was able to scan through the ~300 page book in a few hours and was
impressed at how well the book built from the most basic level of
information (how to find your mobile browser and how to identify sites
that are made or optimized for mobile) to fairly complex level of
information – like social networking on mobile and how to build your
own mobile website.
Overall I was satisfied with the balanced view the authors took on a
variety of topics, as they could have easily used the reference book to
push their own industry agendas more aggressively. For example, Michael
O’Farrell is the chair of the dotmobi Advisory Group and was careful to always offer the reader multiple points of view, tools, and references when it was appropriate.
You can get an excerpt of The Mobile Internet for Dummies from the publisher.
Recognizing that the industry is moving at a blistering pace, the authors have set up their own “desktop” blog to support the book and capture trends
as they happen. Considering the book has now been out for a few months,
it looks like the authors are missing an opportunity to further
monetize their audience as the site is pretty light on content so far.
I guess they’re too busy text messaging to update their blog 🙂