With the New Year off and running, the outlook of the web market is beginning to shape itself. More and more companies are creating mobile web sites and the need for a mobile site is becoming required. This is due to the number of smartphones in the market, a number that will continue to rise this year and is projected to overtake feature phone sales by the third quarter of 2011. During the president’s State of the Union address, president Obama spoke of the mobile market’s growth and stated:
“This isn’t about faster Internet or fewer dropped calls. It’s about connecting every part of America to the digital age.”
2011 will be a year of intensifying the mobile market by bringing faster, more reliable web connections and easier, more streamlined web development tools. Wireless companies are hard at work bringing the next generation of mobile web; such as, T-Moile’s HSPA+ network, Sprint’s WiMax network, MetroPCS’s LTE network, and Verizon bringing 4G networks to 30 markets. With greater speeds, more people will utilize mobile websites which is why the company behind jQuery has developed a touch optimized web framework.
The framework jQuery Mobile has been in testing phases of its full release and is currently in version 1.0 Alpha 2 since November 2010. The final release is scheduled for early this year, as early as this month. This framework will make it easier to build a mobile website that utilizes the strengths of a touch screen interface. With the first month of the New Year about over, the digital age is beginning to grow and soon it will truly be a defining moment.
#1 by Chris on January 27, 2011 - 1:53 pm
I can’t wait for more websites to be geared towards mobile devices! It’s interesting that with Flash on the Android platform you can view sites that have flash content on them, it is a pain that the sites aren’t optimized for mobile viewing (i.e. the sites still display full size as if you were at a computer viewing it on a full screen).
Look forward to the future!
#2 by Meghan on January 27, 2011 - 2:02 pm
Since the world is becoming so geared toward needing mobile internet, hopefully the prices from cell phone service providers decreases.
#3 by Patrick McAwesome on January 27, 2011 - 2:07 pm
Hopefully the advent of an easy to use development platform will help phase out a lot of the bloatware apps issue. With no need to install pointless applications for websites you rarely (but necessarily) use, I for one welcome our new jQuery Overlords.
Keep up the interesting articles!
#4 by Burt on January 27, 2011 - 2:58 pm
Let’s not just hope that service costs decrease, but that service performance increases as well. We are starting to breach the 4G world and it’s making mobile Internet usage more efficient and user friendly.