MobEA V: Charles McCathieNevile on “Mobile Web in the Developing World @ Bangalore, 2006”

Note: These are notes from the MobEA V: Mobile Web in Developing Worlds Workshop, which is located with WWW2007.

There was a workshop on Mobile Web in the Developing World in Bangalore in 2006. One way the W3C kicks off ideas, is to do a workshop or two around the world.

Charles was at the workshop for Opera. They don’t have the answers to solve all the problems but they do have a great little browser, Opera Mini that runs on a 50% of phones being made.

One problem, if you don’t have a handset with mobile web access then you’re not getting the mobile web. There are some people working on SMS. Opera lives at a baseline where people have Web access.

There needs to be things that will work on SMS and for nothing but for billions of people.

There was a report that came out from the W3C. Their particular interest is in the Web not really SMS or voice. They’re looking at the upper half of the market.

At the workshop, there was a discussion on what the mobile was.

There was a goal of developing a community around people with an interest in this.

Currently there 150 million phones, which is growing at 5 million a month. A minority of these phones are web-enabled. Currently there are less then 50 million web-enabled computers.

Stephane is making a tour trying to talk to people in the developing world. There is a mailing list which has been pretty quiet. He is seeking some EU funding. The W3C also wants expand the number of voices they’re listening to.