Joining the Dots

dotmobi is planning to launch a Device Database. David Murphy caught up with dotmobi Vice President, Advanced Services and Applications, Paul Nerger, to find out why

DM: So Paul, tell us why the mobile world needs another Device Database?

PN: Well I think there are a lot of indications that the mobile Internet is finally taking off, and this year could be very significant. ESPN.mobi did more traffic than the .com site in December, so thats great. And if you go to their mobile website, its pretty good, but it could be better. They are working on improving it, but one of the challenges developers have when building a mobile site is that there are so many devices with different screen resolutions and different capabilities. So what tends to happen is that companies either build to the lowest common denominator, or they build to each specific device. Now the big guys, Google, Microsoft, AOL, they can do that, and they use a Device Database to do it. They detect the device and optimise the  content or scale the image or whatever, but it is expensive. They spend a lot of money to do that and smaller companies, and when I say smaller, Im talking in this respect about companies like Disney and MTV, they cannot afford to do it.
Now our investors are 14 of the largest mobile Internet companies out there, and they said that they thought this problem needs to be solved, because the data is out there, but its strewn around all over the place. Developers dont want to go to the Nokia site, then the Samsung site, then the Sony Ericsson site, then AT&T, then Verizon, so we have brought all data together, including copyrighted data from the likes of Vodafone and Nokia, but also from places like WURFL, to try and make it a bit easier for developers.
So well put all this data in one place and it will be free to view. There will also be an API that will return the attributes like the display characteristics, whether it has GPS, anything you might want to use in your application.

DM: And this is all free to access?

PN: No, we are charging for that, but we are almost giving it away for free. Our investors say they want this to be pervasive so they just want to cover the cost of distribution. So the cost is just $99 (45) for a year, with a $20 discount if you have a dotmobi name. So this will enable the small, independent developers to play on a level playing field because theyll have access to all this data.

DM: It all sounds good, but I guess some people will ask why. You mentioned WURFL. Does that not do what youre trying to do?

PN: The developers have looked at WURFL and said that its good, but the data quality isnt always there. Sometimes its good, sometimes its bad. Companies like Google take WURFL and clean it up.

DM: So when will it be ready?

PN: We havent set the release date. Were waiting for the engineers to give us a couple of final things but it will be the first or second day of MWC.

DM: OK, so thats days rather than week. However much it helps developers develop good mobile Internet sites though, what are you doing about the other issues? The fact consumers are worried about what it might cost them to access mobile sites for example?

PN: I think the operators are changing. With the introduction of the iPhone, Apple insisted on the introduction of a flat-rate tariff, and operators are really going into flat-rate now.

DM: They are, but are they doing enough to promote these tariffs? Theres not much point having them if their customers dont realise they exist.

PN: I think youre right, but I think they realise with the amount of data usage on the iPhone and the demographics of the people downloading all this data The iPhone has driven data usage up so the operators who dont have an iPhone are saying: How do I take advantage of this?
The other point is that you have to have the destinations for people to go to, and thats whats getting me really excited. I remember the early days of the Internet and all those corporate website billboards on the information superhighway. In the early 90s, Yahoo! had its cool site of the day, and this is now starting to happen in mobile.

DM: So give us some cool sites, Paul.

PN: zagat.mobi, the restaurant guide, is one. Spanair.mobi is another. This is a Spanish airline that has tackled the problem of how you take and print a boarding pass when its on notebook or a mobile phone. So they send a 2D barcode to the mobile and this becomes the boarding pass. And of course, to do this, they need a Device Database. This is next-generation mobile web, because they dont see it as a disabled dotom site. They are not stuck in dotcom thinking. They are in dotmobi mode, thinking what can I do to build an outrageous mobile experience, and thats what gets me excited.