.mobi Identifying the Unique Selling Points (USPs) and Benefits of Mobi Extension

[TravelBusiness]

I started my domaining "hobby" about one year ago, by investing in a collection of Mobi domains.
Since I have worked for major (Mobile) Telecommunication companies as a consultant for many years, dealing with Mobile/cellular networks and solutions, I was and is still very eager and motivated to be involved in the Mobile Internet technologies and business.
One year ago I didn't know what domaining was all about, and at this very moment I consider myself still a lakeman on the field of domaining, compared to the many experts on the major domaining Forums. I also discovered in the last year that the Mobi domaining business (or hobby in my case), involves quite many technologies and expertises: XHTML, parking programs, appraisal programs, mobile directories, Mobi premium auctions, and especially the many forum discussions about the pros and cons of the Mobi extension.

During my Mobi domain registrations with GoDaddy in december 2006, I was partly motivated by the Unique Selling Points described by GoDaddy on their website, and the other part of the motivation was based on a "gut feeling" that the Mobi extension concept will be very practicle for billions of mobile internet users in future.
After a very learningful year, especially by following the great pros/cons discussions about the Mobi extension, I am still exploring and identifying about the potential Unique Selling Points and benefits of Mobi extension for the general public and the small/medium/large companies.
Therefore, I would like to describe below my own thoughs and interpretation of the potential "USPs" for the .Mobi extension.

Assumptions for the period 2010-2014
- Maximum dataspeed for mobile phones will be high enough and cost attractive (e.g. more than 2 Mb/s per user for the downlink)
- All mobile phone users can enjoy a low cost flat fee for mobile internet services based on mentioned wireless high dataspeed
- The fast majority will still deploy mobile phones with a relative small screen supporting full web browsers such as the nokia N70 (www.opera.com/products/mobile/)

.Mobi Unique Selling Points for all mobile phone users
1) Mobi extension allows the cellular phone users to directly visit the mobile site of a Company in an easy and standardized way. i.e. using "Company.mobi" is expected to be most popular above other alternatives to approach a mobile site: wap.company.com, company.com/mobile, mobile.company.com, m.company.com, company.com/wap
2) Mobi exension allows the cellular phone users to effectively choose to visit the "full website" by using the .Com extension instead of .Mobi extension at certain situations or by certain users: It is expected that the future mobile browsing pattern will require that the auto redirect functions should be disabled for many or all company sites. It's likely that in future the cellular phone users do not want to be controlled by such auto redirect functions anymore, since they want to freely choose between a mobile site or a full website, just by using the .Mobi or .Com extension (after the company name part).
3) Mobi extension is expected to be a trust mark for "content for all mobile phone screens" and "content for people on the go". The "content on the go" concept is even more advanced and attractive for mobile phone users, that that a content should fit nicely on a small screen. Example of "content on the go": Location based information to allow you find the nearest hotel or restaurant, by using calculated location data of the cellular phone and network

.Mobi Unique Selling Points for small/medium/large companies
1) Mobi extension allows a standardized method to reach millions or even billions of potential "customers on the go".
2) Mobi exension has also the potential to boost the professional image of a company: many well-known companies are also using Mobi extension: Bank of America, Nokia, BMW, Rolls-Royce, Ferrari, Zagat, Thalys, etc.
3) Mobi extension allows an attractive method for many small/medium/large companies promote their business effectively with premium/generic domain names that are much more cost attractive than .Com premium/generic domain names.

I look forward to your comments, corrections or additional identified Unique Selling Points of .Mobi extension.

Last but not least, I wish you all a wonderful and blessing New Year 2008 (here in Europe, that moment will be about 7 hours from now)

 

[allnicksgone]

Excellent predictions. Some I am sure are right, others I hope are right.

 

[TravelBusiness]

Allnicksgone, thanks for the comments!
By the way, those described benefits or unique selling points, have been mostly addressed and discussed several times before in the major Mobi Forums. I just wanted to structurise and summarise those discussed potential benefits and selling points of the Mobi extension.

Surely, these summarised benefits are far from exhaustive or complete. Therefore it's most welcome to see corrections or potential additional benefits that are identifyed so far.
For example, the following are also quite interesting potential benefits of the Mobi extension that have been mentioned in Forums several times, which I forgot to mention:

1) The major Search Engines like Google and Yahoo, may consider to parse or recognize the ".mobi" part of the domain name, so that such listed mobile sites may ranked higher than ".com" sites, when the search is conducted by a mobile device.
2) When the Mobi extension can be fully recognized and accepted by the mass population as the most efficient way to approach mobile sites, then large mobile phone vendors like Nokia or Samsung, may add the ".mobi" part as a default when users are typing a company name or generic term in the URL-window of their mobile phone device. Of course, when users are typing the full URL address, like Company.EU, then the ".mobi" extension won't be added as default.

Looking forward to your comments to extend this list of potential benefits or selling points of Mob extension as complete and convincing as possible!
Cheers.