Now that the political dust has finally settled (it even made the news on the BBC) in my fair Commonwealth (for some reason, we're not a State), I can now get back to fully focusing on scouring the webosphere to see what people are saying about enterprise mobility. I was sent a link yesterday by a friend and colleague that I found quite interesting.
The author of the blog entry is someone whom I respect and find to be highly knowledgeable in the world of enterprise mobility. That said, I simply can not agree with his hypothesis.
John Wargo, formerly of BoxTone and now AT&T Wireless, penned a great article yesterday about mobile device performance. He correctly states that mobile device batteries are being drained by the increased demands placed upon them by users' ever increasing hunger for rich data and applications on mobile devices. However, John also says:
"There’s no need for Flash, images, cool transitions or other glitz – just send the data the user needs and nothing else. Mobile web sites should be text-based, nothing more. If you do this Developers, you’ll allow your users, through the simple application of Physics, to achieve better (longer) battery life for their mobile devices."
I cannot disagree more. Let me be more clear. I cannot disagree more with the beginning of this statement. As I pause to sip from my 4th cup of coffee this morning, I ponder whether we need HD or 3D television. Do we even need color? No... Black & White is perfectly sufficient. Frankly, we don't need television. Let's just stick with radio. That's all we *really* need.
Furthermore, the article suggests that "it’s the users & applications and their complete disregard for the network that are causing the problem." Again, I must disagree. Is this something that ever gets mentioned from a home broadband perspective? Of course not. When the ISP has poor service, they usually don't come back and say that people should stop playing massively multiplayer games, do they?
The mobile web is becoming increasingly rich - both for consumers and professionals...don't forget, they are the same people. The onus, in my mind, is on the carriers to ensure they have sufficient capacity to provide that rich multimedia experience. The onus is also on battery and handset manufacturers to improve the power management of the devices.
It's the present, it's the future and it is unavoidable.
