Is Mobile Client a Good Strategy?
by Aner Ravon

No.

Or more precisely: Definite “No!” if you’re a web start up. Simple ”No!” if you’re YouTube or Skype. Selectively if you’re Verizon Wireless. Yes if you’re Nokia.

For web start ups it’s a dead end, and not one I see opening anytime soon. 

The industry has been debating the mobile clients forever. Java for Mobile (J2ME) was supposed to make it easy ages ago - portable across devices, universal, safe. Ya right.

So did downloading servers, OTA (over the air delivery) standards, new APIS, self installers… We are almost 10 years and gazillions of dollars later and progress has been marginal at best. People download ringtones and sometimes games, they don’t download true mobile applications.

There are two major huge problems that prevent 3rd party mobile clients from reaching mass market users. The first and major problem is behavioral. People just don’t download software to their mobile phone. They may download stuff that doesn’t look like software, but not software in the true sense. What is it that makes people download ringtones, sometimes games, but not mobile Skype or Google Maps or MSN IM? Good question.

My experience shows that people see IM, Skype and Maps as features, and that they still expect communication features to come “with the phone”.  In most cases they can’t really tell whether the feature was provided by the carrier or by the phone manufacturer. They certainly don’t care. Then there is the scary factor. Downloading a mobile application is an action performed in uncharted territory for most people. It involves hacking the phone, installing something in a very unfamiliar environment, going through all sorts of warning messages, messing up with the most important accessory they have and risking a lot of rollback time. Nah-uh!

Oliver Starr from Mobile Crunch has summarized it beautifully:

“I had the opportunity to look at a substantial number of companies planning on operating in the mobile space… In short I’ve spent an awful lot of time directly engaged in the mobile sector and most of that time focused on mobile applications.

I can tell you honestly that I would never simply come out and bash a company based upon a show of hands – even one from a technology conference like Under the Radar. However, what you don’t know is that I have been posing the same question; “By a show of hands, how many people here have downloaded something to their mobile handset that was neither a ring tone nor a wall paper?” Every time I’ve spoken at an event for the last two years. That is to say that I’ve asked thousands of people this same question across dozens of events over a period of years.

In any case, across all the conferences I’ve spoken at and all the audiences I’ve queried the MOST I’ve ever had answer in the affirmative was at the Under the Radar Conference recently and even then the total was under five percent of the attendees.”

I personally trust first hand show of hands very much. It is definitely an indication.

The other major problem is technical. Deploying a mobile client across a wide variety of mobile phones is one via Dolorosa. It’s usually hard to get it working properly on one. But then there are hundreds of different devices out there. This makes it not easy even for players of the magnitude of Skype, YouTube and Google. Even they don’t just do it. Om Malik picked up a WSJ piece on Skype’s Chief Executive Officer Niklas Zennstrom dealing with this very issue. When they discuss the mobile future of Skype, Niklas admits that it’s simply too damn difficult:

“When we begun developing the mobile phone version we didn’t realize the number of technical obstacles. It is challenging and is taking much longer than expected,”

Om then goes on and lists the technical problems Skype face which are very generic. In a nutshell, most Mobile applications require CPU that halts the phone, consume bandwidth that is still too scarce and if that’s not enough they go on and kill the batteries. Again, I couldn’t agree more.

Some players are capable of deploying mobile clients. Verizon, for example, is deploying millions of clients using it’s GetItNow platform. This doesn’t mean web service providers should do this at home. The key is a captive user base and a narrow range of problems, a combination only few Tier 1 carriers can claim. Verizon’s user base is one asset even Google is jealous of - captive access to 50 million paying subscribers. Verizon then narrowed the domain by selecting a single application platform (BREW) that is mature enough to be a true ecosystem. Finally, they built a marketing program that actually works.

Moreover. With a huge user base, porting investments per device make sense. Still, even Verizon preloads strategic applications to the phone before the point of sale, because as friendly and as robust the catalog can be, most people still find downloading an application too challenging.

How many players do you know who can pull that off? Not many. So what do you do as a start up?

You stand the best chance if your service does not require any installation or manipulation of the mobile device. If your value can be delivered via SMS, WAP, Streaming or any other mechanism the phone is naturally provisioned to do, you’re far better off. If a client is an absolute must then you should (again agreeing with Oliver Pratt) give it for free and get it on a carrier’s deck. YouTube is going to find out they can’t go anywhere without Verizon. MSN and AOL found that out long ago. Skype already outsources the problem to niche providers such as iSkoot and EQO - players that are focused on mobile enablement and that only. To them it makes sense and the giants, assuming they are smart enough and with reasonable egos, will leave it to them.

Most web services, however, will either stay on the mobile web or die trying to distribute a mobile client.

Aner Ravon
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