The Web on the Move

Overview

• What is W3C?
• State of the Mobile Web
• Mobile Web Initiative
• Perspectives

What is W3C ?

• Founded by Tim Berners-Lee, Web Inventor
• Mission: Lead the Web to its Full Potential
• Industry consortium
• About 400 members (3, Alcatel, AT&T, BT Labs, DaimlerChrysler, Ericsson, France Telecom, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, SAP, Siemens, TIM, T-Mobile, Vodafone,...)

W3C Technologies

Over 80 Web Standards (Recommendations) engineered to date(list/svg-by-yr/translations)

(Organization of work:SVG-from-RDF,PNG)

Overview

• What is W3C?
• State of the Mobile Web
• Mobile Web Initiative
• Perspectives

Web has become Mass Medium

• on par with TV: 14 hours a week online (JupiterResearch, Jan 2006, US market)
• huge potential for mobile Web access

Mobile Web: Growing Use (1)

• Browsing is number one data packet generating service
• Especially for 3G users

Source: Nokia study, 2005

Mobile Web: Growing Use (2)

• T-Mobile Web'n'Walk:
  • 330 page views per month per user
  • 199% increase in data ARPU (Average Revenue Per User - excl. SMS)
  • Source: Opera, April 2006
• BBC
  • BBC: Number of requests to mobile content doubled in 2005
  • Approaching 250 million/day
  • 28% of mobile users *only* accessed BBC content from mobile phone, not PC
  • Source: BBC, November 2005
• Web/info access generates $2.7 billion of data revenue (32%) (Source: CTIA Semi-Annual Wireless Survey)
• "Mobile browsing becoming mainstream", Ipsos study/news.com
• ...

Active Users Increasing, Strong Revenue Generation Despite Price Erosion

A significant proportion of subscribers have terminals enabled for browsing. The active user population is rapidly growing, and despite the downward pressure on prices, mobile browsing is a strong revenue generator.

Source: W3C-MWI/Nokia

Mobile Browsing Growth Outpaces Other Services

Mobile browsing is set to significantly outpace subscriber growth in the coming years, overshadowing other services such as advertising, ringtones, SMS and other entertainment and media.

Source:W3C-MWI/Nokia

Overview

• What is W3C?
• State of the Mobile Web
• Mobile Web Initiative
• Perspectives

Who's Involved?

19 Sponsors

• WG Participants: AOL, France Telecom, Google, Microsoft, mTLD, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Opera, T-Online, Telefonica, Vodafone, ...

Mobile Web Best Practices

• Audience
  • Web authors and developers
  • From one-person-shop to top-10 Web site
• Distilled existing "tips and tricks" (W3C Accessibility, iMode, Opera, Openwave, Nokia, ...)
  • No table for layout, no spacers-GIFs, no frames
  • Screen estate constraints: small top navigation, avoid large graphics
  • Scrolling should be in one direction
  • ...
• W3C has provided BP checker Software (alpha)

  http://www.w3.org/Mobile/check

• W3C standard expected in Q4 2006

Take-Up of Best Practices

• Currently in testing phase ("candidate recommendation")
• WG members are using BP draft to implement sites
• Publicly visible take-up
  • Part of Google mobile webmaster FAQ
  • Part of "switch-on" guide of .mobi
  • Implementation report by small Web developers

"MobileOK" Trustmark

• First Working Draft available

  http://www.w3.org/TR/mobileOK/

• Web content passes test suite based on Best Practices
• Two levels
  • Level-1: Machine-verifiable
  • Level-2: Not all machine-verifiable, require human intervention
• Machine-readable label
• Third party or self-certification

Device Description

• Needed for content adaptation
• Commercial and open-source solutions available
• Workshop conclusions
  • Focus on API to access device repositories
  • Work with OMA on vocabulary
  • Less focus on creating a repository

Overview

• What is W3C?
• State of the Mobile Web
• Mobile Web Initiative
• Perspectives

MWI Future Work

• Workshop "The Mobile Web in Developing Countries" (New Dehli, Dec 4/5)

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4795255.stm

• Training
• Test suites
• ...

Wider-Reaching Benefits

• Toward a "Web on Everything" (Ubiquitous Web, Embedded Systems)
• And seeing the Web pop-up in all sort of places, likely and unlikely ...

It's 1996 All Over Again ...

... But Some Things Easier