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The iPhone is a bit like Marmite – either you love it or you hate it. Fans of the iPhone are thrilled to finally have all the modern-tech jiggery-pokery they could possibly need neatly encased in one, sleek, über-fashionable gizmo. Critics, meanwhile, argue that it has insufficient power to operate its wide range of gadgets and, however great it looks, looking great is all it’s good for.

Whichever side of the fence you’re on, it’s hard to deny the influence that the iPhone has had on the way we think about looking at websites on a mobile phone. Prior to the launch of the Apple device, the internet was usually perceived as either being impossible to properly see on a mobile or, when websites were stripped of their bells and whistles and morphed into plain and simple mobile sites, as something that was quite serviceable and functional but also really quite boring.

The web content of an iPhone is a long way from boring. With the iPhone, we’re not talking about viewing a condensed version of the web. We’re talking about viewing the web – the full monty, the real deal, the genuine article. With its easy-to-use touchscreen and zoom functions, together with a larger screen than any other mobile on the market, the iPhone has made accessing the internet on a phone a far more interesting and rewarding experience, the sort of experience we’d normally associate with a computer. 

As well as giving people the means to view the web more readily, Apple have also stimulated the desire to do so and advanced an expectation among all mobile users that their handset should have web browsing capabilities. That’s probably true of even those who have never actually seen an iPhone. There’s no way of rolling that expectation back now.

Where does dot-com meet dot-mobi?

The iPhone calls into question the increasingly thin and blurred line between mobile phones and computers. When is a mobile not a mobile? When does it start to morph into a computer? Should we even be defining these two devices in such terms now? It’s interesting to note that the iPhone has not been produced by a telecommunications company, but by a company best known for its desktop computers and portable media players.   

If the web you can access on an iPhone is the web, the same web you can see on your desktop computer, does that render the notion of a separate and distinct mobile web redundant before it’s barely even started? Not in the slightest. For one thing, the iPhone highlights the importance of location specific content. For another, it doesn’t solve all of the functional issues associated with the mobile web and users have reported a number of problems when using the device to view the internet. These problems include: 

• The iPhone web browser – a version of Apple’s Safari browser – does not support Flash, causing a range of difficulties (including navigation difficulties)
• Problems with sites where links and/or buttons have been placed too close together  
• Problems with sites where buttons are a long way from the things they refer to
• Filling in text fields and using drag-and-drop functions are often far from easy on a small touchscreen
• Some sites are slow to load, especially when pages have lots of graphics and/or adverts
• Some sites open pop-up windows without warning

Many of these issues are to do with particular websites rather than the Apple device. And given that the number of people who own an iPhone is still relatively small, you could be forgiven for believing they are not especially significant in the grand scheme of mobile things. That might well change during the coming months, though, as phone companies press on with developing their own versions of the iPhone. The time when web developers and information architects need to start thinking about designing not just two different versions of their website – a desktop site and a mobile site – but three versions – a desktop site, a mobile site and an iPhone site – is probably not far away.

In fact, a handful of the more far-sighted brands are already doing rather more than just thinking about it. Amazon, Facebook, Travelocity and the US news channels CBS and Fox are among those who have recently launched specific iPhone versions of their sites.

The future’s bright, the future’s…

The impact of the iPhone on the mobile phone market will continue to spread during the next few months. Indeed, perhaps the most pertinent question about the iPhone is not what it means to mobile users and to businesses today, but what it will mean in the future. The most likely developments in future mobile trends include:

• More powerful processors
• Scaleable browsers
• Fresh ways to navigate sites  
• Faster network speeds
• Higher resolution screens 
• Multi-touch and motion sensitive devices
• Video broadcasting via DVB-H technology (Digital Video Broadcasting – Handheld)
• More location specific content (by utilising GPS) 

The human element is something that often gets forgotten about when talking about technology. We want technology to evolve with us and, more specifically, with our needs. For some people, there will always be concerns about trust. But while you may never want to stand on a crowded train and check your bank account on a mobile phone, the day will almost certainly come when you will want to know where the nearest cashpoint is, what time your train leaves, and how you can reserve a seat so you don’t have to stand.

As the internet goes mobile – and with growing sophistication too – the business world needs to fully understand the implications that this has for their digital communications. In the future, people will be using their phones to interact with businesses in a much more personal way, and they will do so with greater ease and greater regularity. There are lots of exciting challenges ahead for digital marketing strategists – and lots of exciting opportunities too.    

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