Who would have thought a Blackberry Curve was the device that accessed more web pages than any other in the UK?!!
That’s the finding reported by a competitor this week (backed up by the data we see through our servers of phones accessing our clients’ mobile websites). And it echoes thoughts that we discuss and attempt to address with our blog posts, Linkedin updates, tweets and monthly newsletter stories.
Before 2008-ish, when the iPhone exploded into our collective consciousness and changed (for the better) how we all thought about and used our mobiles (lived up to the BT Cellnet hype of *that* 1998 TV advert, some would say) the mobile device environment was enormously fragmented. 5,000 phones being used monthly according to comScore data of the time. Mostly they were Nokias back then – but boy were there a lot of them. Different screen sizes, colour vs mono, varying degrees of internet access. 2G, 2,5G, some 3G connectivity. Operator portals as walled garden access to content. And SMS was king.
Now we’ve had 4 years or so of relative simplicity (or so you’d believe according to the headlines). One fruit to rule them all.
Only not quite. For two years or more, open source Android OS phones have been selling and being used by more people than any other platform. Except that, because it’s open source, different manufacturers have “forked” the OS (interpreted it in their own particular way, to deliver a branded experience such that a Samsung use of Android is subtly different to an HTC experience). And as manufacturers have developed and sold phones at a variety of price points – all of which could (to varying degrees) live up to Apple’s vision of a “smart” mobile phone, where it was as much a mini, fits in your palm, computer as it was a phone with benefits – well, so we have returned to a fragmented mobile world.
Blackberry – their latest phones running BB10 but still millions of older, popular “Curve” devices being used by workers on a daily basis (company bought and paid for), but running older versions of BB software. Windows/Nokia now running the latest WindowsPhone OS. But there are still plenty of old Nokias floating around running Symbian. And the largest OS of all – Android. Runs on thousands of devices. And all running any of about 5 or 6 iterations of Android that have been released over the past 4 years. Glorying in a smorgasbord of version names: Jellybean vs Gingerbread vs Ice Cream Sandwich.
There are more than 8,000 devices on that comScore list these days. The top 10 devices account for less than 50% of all web traffic. That’s a long tail.
Build an app to serve all your customers? How many apps? How about one website that works. For everybody?
As our colleagues-in-mobile-arms quite rightly point out:
"Deploying server-side web services or a device database to detect device profiles is fast becoming the best option to help brands successfully implement a winning mobile strategy. Those organisations that succeed at delivering a seamless experience across multiple devices will thrive. Those that don’t will cease to be relevant to their customers.”
Exactly what we propose…
