What has the iPhone got to do with Internet Search?

Were you one of those queuing outside the Apple store in Regents Street or outside an O2 store last Friday evening? No. neither was I, but the temptation to buy an iPhone is very strong and I’m sure I will have one sometime next year.

So what has the iPhone got to do with Internet Search? Well, we at Propellernet believe it will act as a major catalyst to ensure the Internet is readily available wherever you find yourself.

WiFi for mobile

Currently, the iPhone accesses the Internet via WiFi and therefore needs to be within range of a WiFi base station. WiFi access via The Cloud comes as part of the 02 contract, however such coverage is currently limited across the UK, especially outside of London. This means there are some pretty significant commercial decisions that need to be taken by the airtime providers, as well as those locations offering WiFi coverage, in order to cater for or even counter the iPhone user. We see them as :-

• Do venues such as Starbucks offer their WiFi free in order to take advantage of the “iPhone Set” or do they maintain their current agreement with T Mobile and extract more money from them? Or do they do a deal with The Cloud?
• Do the other airtime providers, outside of O2, offer free GPRS/WAP coverage for the other smart-phones so that the Internet can be readily accessed anywhere?
• Do retailers, Hotel groups, car dealers offer WiFi to enable free browsing on their own websites to support the sale or cross sell – could you?
• Will the standard cost of mobile calls be reduced to counter the voice over IP option?

Ultimately, the answers to the above will shake out over the coming months, dependent upon the iPhone’s success. However, what is common, regardless of the outcomes, is people’s Internet behaviour will now change and change very quickly. No longer will people spend most of their browsing time at home or at work, the “somewhere else” browsing time will increase dramatically.

So what about search? Finally getting to the point! Google announced this month that it is introducing a new mobile system called Android, which it hopes will bring internet access to the masses. Yahoo! also have irons in the fire with their Yahoo! Go and have agreements with several airtime providers. Both have a strong focus on paid search and getting the most relevant results on to the handset.

Are you ready?

All this means that businesses need to ensure their website is mobile/pda ready in order that their customers can have just as good an experience via the mobile platform as they do using their computer…this is what they will expect. Best practice Natural Search optimisation still applies, but you could find yourself having to build a new website purely for the mobile platform. But don’t worry, if you would like some guidance with this, please let us know and we will help you wherever we possibly can. You can check out Google and Yahoo! mobile search products as well as some others in order to give you a flavour, some of which are still in beta..

So, if you are lucky enough to have an iPhone do a search with Google now and see what the experience is like…maybe access your own website as well to see what it looks like. We would also recommend switching your iTunes on at the same time and listening to “Searching” by Hazel Dean just to round off the experience. Then again….maybe not.