.mobi What is the difference between .mobi and this?

[binaryman]

I see there are these 2 big mobile content providers, Mobileplay and Avantgo through whom big business can get their message across to the mobile world.
http://www.avantgo.com/frontdoor/index.html
and
http://www.mobileplay.com/
Is .mobi not in competition with these services? What is more attractive about .mobi. If you were a large corporation and you had your site up and running on mobileplay why would you feel the need to get in on the .mobi bandwagon? Are they not basicly both the same? With the difference being that .mobi gives you a mobile website of your own.
I'd like some feedback and views please.
Thanks
Fred

 

[DomainBuyerBroker]

Avantgo is a mobile content provider pushing content via "channels" to mobile devices. You can get the Wall Street Journal via Avantgo along with other content. Soon, I'm sure, you will able to get content from WSJ.mobi too.

The Avantgo model allows subscribers to get all the info they want through this mobile portal. I think Avantgo and .mobi will coexist happily.

I will send this thread link to Avantgo and see if they want to join in the conversation.

 

[newton]

.mobi is not in competition with these services and is primarily just another string to add to their bow in terms of offerings.

Most corporates will want to get the message out there as best they can and to be honest who can blame them. Its new technology and possibly a whole new set of customers to reach with mobile devices, so they should be embracing this with open arms and good luck to them.

 

[binaryman]

Yes but are there advantages to .mobi over the other 2 mediums? Because if not then what would motivate business and consumer to use .mobi when the other 2 are already there. Those other 2 also have fast download times and lots of content available. OK you dont get your own website like with .Mobi of course. .Mobi will have to offer some advantages over the others in order for it to become the accepted mobile medium.

 

[Binfus]

OK you dont get your own website like with .Mobi of course..........Mobi will have to offer some advantages over the others in order for it to become the accepted mobile medium.

IMO, if you read the latter sentence in your post first, and then the first sentence.......you'd get the answer you yourself have noted. Its not trivial in terms of business marketing to have a simple, standard and universal approach to have a reliable, well-known medium for mobile content and .mobi does exactly that...and not just for those who can afford to employ services of third parties like Avantgo but also small mom and pop stores ....like your corner dry cleaner, barber or shipping service, who could just have their business address, hours, rates, etc on their simple 1-2 page .mobi site that would be geo targeted to those who search for that particular service in their vicinity. Even for big business, having their own site that they have full 24/7 control over and that they could market and brand would be the preffered solution IMO. The fact is that the writing is on the wall about mobile web being the next BIG thing and hence lots of players would clamour to get their share of this sweet pie....nothing unusual in business.....for instance, Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask all actually provide very similar (almost identical) service and still many feel that there's not enough competition in the search market.

 

[henrychen]

The AvantGo service and .mobi sites can definitely coexist happily. People use AvantGo as a portal to their favorite sources of mobile content, whether it's content from the leading brands or content from user created custom channels. It's like a my.yahoo.com for mobile optimized content, that is cached so that it can be viewed offline and more quickly.

There will also be people who would rather go directly to the content provider's own mobile site to access specific content.

I definitely believe that AvantGo is the better/easier way to view mobile content, but since not everyone uses AvantGo, it is to the content provider's advantage to provide as many ways as possible for mobile users to access their content.

Henry Chen
Product Manager, AvantGo