.mobi .Mobi going NOWHERE FAST??

[binaryman]

Everyday there are reports about exciting things happening in the mobile world but never is .Mobi mentioned in even the smallest way. Look at these BBC headlines from today for instance.



"Hot picks: Future mobile trends"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6340103.stm

Now lets look at one of "trends" featured in this article.
http://www.tocmag.com/index.php
http://www.mxdata.co.uk/home.aspx
http://www.yospace.com/

Some questions now arise.
1) Why dont they have a .MOBI site??????????
2.)Why is .Mobi not mentioned as one of these "EXCITING NEW TRENDS"???

Also none of the other mentioned "Trends" have .Mobi addresses although are geared towards Mobile users.

Anyone care to comment?

Some more recent BBC "MOBILE" headlines:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6309593.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6155678.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4707964.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6232243.stm

 

[Rubber Duck]

Because the Chinese Cell Phones have 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0 which symbolize ENGLISH characters. If you want to make a cell phone to suit the 2,000+ Chinese Characters go for it. Mobile is English sadly and that is the way it is going to be. Mind you a few Europeans might throw in there characters, because they are simpler and plus in order to sell service in Canada you need to have French symbols and other stuff Plus English is SO damn boring.

But this isn't a IDN discussion.

Very intresting thread I must say, please keep it clean so we can keep it

- Steve

Mobile is English? Who told you that Rick Schwartz?

China is generally stated as being largest and is certainly one of the fastest growing mobile markets. That certainly isn't English.

Japan and has been technically the most advanced, but is rapidly being over hauled by China. Japan has over 100 Million Mobiles and that certainly isn't English.

The European Market, if you count it as such is actually the largest and that is prodominantly not English, although Latin Characters dominate.

The US is about to race off and loose to India for 4th place in the mobile stakes, and that frankly is not English either. Only about 3% of Indian's would regard English as a first language.

Dot Mobi by contrast probably is very much an English Phenomenon, because in terms of browsing, the English market is so far behind, that dot Mobi actually appears to be cutting edge!

 

[iNod]

And no Rick did not tell me that. lol, I gather you have something against him lol?

I know what you say and I know everything you just said but realistically, English is the Global language, the only language taught globally in atleast 1 school in EVERY country.

Chinese have over 2,000 Characters in there language, European is Latin dominated as you said and have over 50+ characters in there languages (different ones have different amounts, this is average)

Most of the top Cell Phone Makers (Samsung, and Motorola, and Nokia) Are mainly English. They may not have there HQ in an English Speaking country (such as Finland for Nokia, South Korea for Samsung, and US for Motorola) They speak there own language but there cell phones are sold to the Chinese with English keys on them using the numbers 1-9 rather than 一十二億三千四百五十六萬七千八百九十 those symbols beside mean 1-9 and 0 in Chinese notice there is not 10 symbols but rather 18, meaning two or more mean one number. It is much easer to just have 1 than (the actual one is 一 for one but just for instance) two or more symbols? It is, when we are talking about things half the size of your normal keyboards number pad.

Now enough about IDN this is .mobi I do however thing European languages will see there way to cell phones but not yet.

There are mullions of languages spoken in the world. I speak 5 myself and Canada as a whole have about 30+ different languages and 3 of them being main parts. Eskimo-Aleut, French, and English and many others from many countries. I know US speak Spanish and English, and many others. Chinese speak about 3 types of Chinese depending where you live, same goes to Japan. Would it not be easier to just have 1 Main language..? That way we can all talk with eachother? I'm not saying it has to be English but maybe Latin or French or something.

- Steve

 

[Rubber Duck]

The idea of a single language is as old as Esperanto itself.

Reality is less than 10% of the World's population speak English as a first language. English has dominated first due to British and laterly US Hegemony.

That period is effectively over and English may now even go into decline. Happened to Latin.

The whole point of many developing technologies are to provide people with the means to communicate in the way that is easiest for them, not to conform to the wishes of a few Western ideologs that have totally lost the plot.

Chinese adopted Arabic Numbers centuries ago. About the only people that don't use them are the Arabs. For ringing up and texting the 0-9 work fine, but don't kid yourself. If you want to understand these markets, find out what languages they text in. It is clear that where possible they text not only in their own language but in their own scripts. Chinese and Japanese have no issues here. Pinyin is not much used and if Japanese want to use a phonetic alphabet they have several of their own.

Latin characters are used phonetically a lot for Indian languages on blogs at the moment, but that is only because Unicode for these languages is comparatively new and adapted keyboards have not been widely distributed. The projects that are aimed at getting India online are legion and Mobiles will often be the key to this, but most of the thrust is aimed at getting the technology to do what the people want, rather than re-educating the populus.

If you talk to Westerners or even some local elite is often pointed out that all business meetings are in English. Yes, and so what? That is not the market we are targeting. We are targetting the transactions made by the man and woman on the street when they are obtaining consumer goods and services. We are NOT by and large targeting CEOs of large organisations.

And no Rick did not tell me that. lol, I gather you have something against him lol?

I know what you say and I know everything you just said but realistically, English is the Global language, the only language taught globally in atleast 1 school in EVERY country.

Chinese have over 2,000 Characters in there language, European is Latin dominated as you said and have over 50+ characters in there languages (different ones have different amounts, this is average)

Most of the top Cell Phone Makers (Samsung, and Motorola, and Nokia) Are mainly English. They may not have there HQ in an English Speaking country (such as Finland for Nokia, South Korea for Samsung, and US for Motorola) They speak there own language but there cell phones are sold to the Chinese with English keys on them using the numbers 1-9 rather than 一十二億三千四百五十六萬七千八百九十 those symbols beside mean 1-9 and 0 in Chinese notice there is not 10 symbols but rather 18, meaning two or more mean one number. It is much easer to just have 1 than (the actual one is 一 for one but just for instance) two or more symbols? It is, when we are talking about things half the size of your normal keyboards number pad.

Now enough about IDN this is .mobi I do however thing European languages will see there way to cell phones but not yet.

There are mullions of languages spoken in the world. I speak 5 myself and Canada as a whole have about 30+ different languages and 3 of them being main parts. Eskimo-Aleut, French, and English and many others from many countries. I know US speak Spanish and English, and many others. Chinese speak about 3 types of Chinese depending where you live, same goes to Japan. Would it not be easier to just have 1 Main language..? That way we can all talk with eachother? I'm not saying it has to be English but maybe Latin or French or something.

- Steve

 

[hugegrowth]

To answer the start of this thread, the fact that .mobi is not mentioned in every article about mobile internet just shows how early we are in the game.

Yes, wait until .mobi sites are common and advertised everywhere, and everyone has internet mobile devices. Wait until it's all proven and then go buy some .mobi's
But oh wait, by then every good one will be gone and the resale market will be xxx% higher than it is now.

The .mobi premium auction at TRAFFIC in days will probably raise the profile of .mobi even more.

It's hard to understand why all domainers haven't bought at least a few .mobi's
The ones who haven't bought seem to dismiss .mobi and browbeat all the others who have.

Mobile internet is going to be h-u-g-e

.mobi is being professionally groomed for mobile websites, the mobi site builder and the staggered auction of premium .mobi's to most likely end-users are examples of brilliant moves to make the extension succeed.

a billion new mobile phones being manufactured each year... hmmmmmm

 

[iNod]

I agree 100%.. Do I like English? No actually I would much rather prefer to be speaking French as English is such a ugly language :/ But can I atm, no sadly.. In the future might I be able too? No probably not as most Americans will never speak another language unless forced. So I don't think English will die as much as it might be drained out. Is it much easier to use 1-9 than other weird symbols.. Why of course.. But many other languages also use them German, French, Spanish, Italian, etc.. So I don't think that will ever change because ALOT of the world speaks French.. Most of Africa speaks French. ATM are there more Chinese than French speakers.. No they are probably the same. Are there more Chinese will Cell Phones than French? YES! Do we need to target the Chinese to get mobile off its feet. YES! Do we need to start speaking Chinese today.. No.. Maybe in the future, but ATM no we don't.

Anyways in order for .mobi to move we need a massive reason to use it. Google for one example or some other reason to use that .mobi ext. ATM there is nothing but 90% parked domains. And the good keywords are sitting collecting dust thanks to our amazing registrar who wants to auction them off to make money.. Do I think that a registrar should be allowed to save all the top quality keywords and auction them off? No I don't. do I think the registrar should be able to hold Government ones (such as 911.mobi, etc) Yes I do.

Parking is just a simple way of saying. Give us your domain, we will make a site for it put ours ads on it and collect 70% of the ad revenue and give you the last 30% for your name. Why don't we just take this domain, spend $10 buying a CMS of some sort and do it ourselves and collection 100%? I don't care if all the domains have ads, atleast they aren't parked at none-mobile compliant services. And parked domains I think should be taken away and reregistered by somebody who wants to contribute something to the mobile internet, while it is still in its development stages.

- Steve

 

[hugegrowth]

Mobile browsing is a reality in Asia. Why would they suddenly turn to dot Mobi?

Couldn't you also say that internet and mobile browsing have occurred so far without IDN's, so why do they need IDN's? An IDN domain isn't necessary to have a website in an Asian country.

I've also heard they are thinking of making the extensions into local language characters, instead of .com, so what effect will that have on .com IDN's? Also, aren't some IDN characters going to be deleted?

Having IDN's does make it easier in Asian countries, because people can use their own language which is only natural.

Having .mobi tells people instantly that it's a mobile site, end of story, which is also more natural, at least to me.

 

[mjnels]

So why on God's Earth did they not launch as an IDN extension? The most important mobile market won't hardly be using ASCII domains at all by this time next year.

They are silly, mobi IS going to support IDN.

Just not yet... patience danielson. patience.

 

[nrmillions]

I agree 100%.. Do I like English? No actually I would much rather prefer to be speaking French as English is such a ugly language :/ But can I atm, no sadly.. In the future might I be able too? No probably not as most Americans will never speak another language unless forced. So I don't think English will die as much as it might be drained out. Is it much easier to use 1-9 than other weird symbols.. Why of course.. But many other languages also use them German, French, Spanish, Italian, etc.. So I don't think that will ever change because ALOT of the world speaks French.. Most of Africa speaks French. ATM are there more Chinese than French speakers.. No they are probably the same. Are there more Chinese will Cell Phones than French? YES! Do we need to target the Chinese to get mobile off its feet. YES! Do we need to start speaking Chinese today.. No.. Maybe in the future, but ATM no we don't.

- Steve

French is not even in the top 10 spoken languages in the world if you look at any reference site. Chinese is always #1 most spoken and english is in the top 3. There are about 5x more english speakers than french.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers

http://geography.about.com/od/culturalgeography/a/10languages.htm

http://www.photius.com/rankings/languages2.html

 

[gou]

You are correct that it is all about branding. There is no technical reason why the dot Mobi extension should be adopted over any others. Branding is the key. Asia is the market. So why on God's Earth did they not launch as an IDN extension? The most important mobile market won't hardly be using ASCII domains at all by this time next year.

Asia is not the market; it's only part of it. That would only make sense under the assumption that mobile technology will not improve in places other than Asia.

 

[shopperx]

No probably not as most Americans will never speak another language unless forced.

Amen to that