Is Japan losing its mobile web edge?

10 Jul 2007

Japan enjoys some of the most advanced mobiles in the world, understands the importance of task orientated mobile web content and applies this to an estimated 100+ million mobile web pages. But despite a constant rollout of ever more advanced mobile gear, very little new mobile web technology has made its way here since Flash Lite showed up back in 2003: CSS support never moved beyond mediocre and JavaScript, let alone AJAX, is no where to be found.

Before i-mode, the mobile web was a barren wasteland of HDML and WML but after revolutionizing the mobile web, Docomo and the other big 3 seem to have got bored and moved on to other technological pursuits like digital TV, GPS and music downloads. You can argue Flash Lite can offer the same interactive experience as any AJAX app but building AJAX apps is a whole lot easier.

The iPhone and S60* mobiles already offer a webkit browser with excellent CSS and AJAX support and developers elsewhere are finally starting to understand mobile web content is far more task orientated than the desktop web and AJAX is the tool of choice for building these task orientated mobile web apps.

For the first time, mobile developers are missing out in Japan.