Mobile Search Trends 2008

I know that I am sticking my neck out by suggesting this, but I truly believe that 2008 will be regarded as the seminal year for mobile search. I appreciate that predicting that mobile search will contribute a significant proportion of search traffic may for some sound like a doomsday leader predicting the end of the world........... after he promised it in 2004/05/06 and 07. But there have been some tweaks in mobile technology which suggest that it’s now time for mobile search to stand up and be counted.

Affordability of 3G and Unlimited Data Packages:

It’s not long ago that paying per minute/data bit for your web access on your phone was your only option to accessing web content. In 2006 for example, Vodafone data was charged at £2.35 per megabyte. When you consider that average mp3 file is 4MBs in size, it would cost you near £10 to download a single high quality music track! Now the situation has changed considerably with most of the UK major networks offering unlimited* web browsing on their phone as either standard within their monthly rental packages or as an additional cheap add on. T-mobile ”Web’n’walk” charges just £7.50 / month for “unlimited” data transfer. This means the first hurdle of cost is finally over with the mass market penetration. *(often subject to a fair use policies) Additionally, the GSM association recently reported that between April 07 and 08, the number of 3G users in Europe doubled to 112 million users - representing 22.5% of all mobile users. In some European countries the cost of mobile broadband services is actually equal to fixed line broadband services. This number must also be added to the number of devices that are Wi-Fi enabled which opens up the opportunity for handsets to be the first point of call for the web. Now that we can surf the web with greater speed and without having to take out a mortgage, it is sensible to suggest that we will also increasingly rely on the search engines on our handsets.

Improvements in mobile browsing capability:

It might not have 3G capability (I’ve just heard that the 3G version is to launch in July 08)and the tie in to the 02 network is hardly perfect, but let’s admit; it has inspired us into thinking what could be. The Apple iPhone has finally shown us the way in terms of what web browsing should look like - a unified web where there is no distinction between mobile and ‘standard’ browsing. My sentiments are shared ;) by Andy Rubin, Google's director of mobile platforms, who remarked at the Mobile World Congress in January 2008 that “there should be nothing that users can access on their desktop that they can't access on their cellphone.”

Improvements to Usability and Design Interface:

Although ‘full/un-optimised’ web browsing has been available on smart phones for a while, their usability has often been poor due to poor screen size and navigation. You always felt that you were being ‘cheated’ when browsing on a smart phone, and don’t even get me started on un-optimised browsing on standard handsets. Smart Phone styled PDA’s have also never been heavily subsidised for upgrade, unlike their inferior browsing counterparts, thus excluding them from the mass market. With safari browsing for example of the iPhone there is no need to ‘optimize’ i,e change content for handsets. We finally have a unified web which has caught the imagination. Whilst it’s true that the Iphone was actually lunched in 2007, in 2008 we are starting to see iPhone designs such as touch screen, filtering into mainstream handset designs. See the new LG Secret Phone as an example. Quality touch screen functionality is important as it ends the quandary of where to put keys – the outcome of which is often at the expense of screen size and thus browsing enjoyment.

One Click to Google: Samsung have just launched a new 3G mobile:

The Samsung Soul which incorporates a one touch button to Google. Although the concept in itself is not new, (they first announced a similar partnership with Motorola in 2006 which unsurprisingly didn’t light up the sky), it would appear that 2008 is a better year to re-launch the feature as users are more inclined to actually use it for the very reasons listed above.

Uptake of GPS Mobile Devices is improving local searches:

Whilst most consumers are familiar with GPS (Global Positioning System) via their in car navigation system, they may have failed to notice the more wider spread introduction of GPS compatible handsets entering the marketplace. GPS capability in a handset not only offers the user a chance to navigate around the streets (whilst walking into lampposts), but from a search (and advertising) perspective, networks can twin search results with geographically useful information based on the users location. Imagine that I am a visitor to London and standing in the middle of Leicester Sq on a rainy Sunday afternoon. I’m hungry and want to know where I can get some sushi. Using Google I can search for restaurants which return a set of results and layers them on Google maps for me to find. This technology isn’t the future it’s actually now! In the coming year Nokia predicts it will sell 35 million GPS-enabled phones. A third of the 188 million phones sold last year with Symbian based operating system came with GPS. As GPS is incorporated as standard within handsets, so too will the interaction of location based search increase.

Conclusions:

Like all trends, timing and external factors can be the difference between failure and success to which mobile search is no exception. Unlike ‘traditional web search’ via your computer which Google took a hold of through continual innovation, mobile search has had to sit back and be hugely reliant on external factors to get it kick-started. Its not that we haven’t had the capability - ‘traditional search’ was phenomenally successful even at 56kbps (dial up), but we barely touch it on our phone at 171.2 Kbps (2.5G). Why? Because we wanted a unified web solution where the mobile could compete on par with a mac/pc with all the bells and whistles. For anyone who regularly travels business class, remember how you felt when you were forced to travel economy –you would have preferred to swim to your destination. In mobile the same applies and in 2008 we can all fly business.