It is not the first time you heard "real work happens in the field". First generation mobile applications are custom clients J2ME, BREW or Symbian application connected to back-end server through an adaptor. Obviously this architecture requires mobile clients that need to be ported to variety of handset flavors that are available in the market at any given time and need to develop adaptors in the back-end.
The so called inflection point in mobile applications is not really mysterious; this has been happening in the desktop world in the form of web applications for the last 10 years. Enterprise or consumer applications like your online bank, travel planning (Expedia etc.) are all web applications with or without AJAX. Unfortunately web access from Blackberry devices, smart phones, treo or ip-phones today is unusable and frustration is under statement.
Main problem with the current web is the assumption that one-size fits all. Web applications are complex whether it is CRM, service management, ERP, or SCM, has countless columns, tabs etc. which is perfectly fine for desktop use. But this approach doesn’t work for mobile devices; mobile browser tries to render the full web application in a small-screen. Even in a transcoded version it is difficult to find the required information, it takes too long to download, and unwanted richer content drains the battery fast. In the consumer applications, perhaps your initial mobile screen is filled with a banner ad than what you are looking for.
We think, mobile web should be personalized instead of one-size fits all approach. Mobile web should be "what you need is what you get™" since WYSIWYG paradigm doesn't fit for mobile screen. In this new approach, Blackberry or any smart phone connects to a personalization proxy through the proxy setting interface on that device. During the desktop usage or setup time, policies and preferences (web application parameters) would be recorded automatically, and proxy delivers the right content when a mobile device connects to this web application. In the new approach an enterprise user would access a work order/schedule when he connects to complex service management application or a consumer can setup to display only the form to search for his hotel/car reservation without irrelavant content when he connects to travelocity.com for example. This methodology can be applied to any web application whether it is consumer or enterprise. For further information, visit http://www.appvoyage.com/
Our vision is mobile web application should be personalized and location aware, what do you think ?
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