Mobile Access to Single Dealer Portals, by Paul Brant
Recently I sat and listened to a webcast, the subject of which was "Buyers' market - Single Dealer Portals and courting the online client".
During the webcast, the delivery of SDPs (Single Dealer Portals) to mobile devices was discussed. The only software vendor on the panel, selling an AJAX and Comet solution, prescribed the delivery of SDPs to mobile users solely within the mobile device's browser.
This is an unsatisfactory approach, both in terms of market penetration and application functionality and reliability.
Even today, not all mobile platforms have a browser capable of supporting AJAX and Comet based access. For example, no current Blackberry models support AJAX and Comet within their browser. To rely on mobile browser technology, therefore, is to preclude every single Blackberry user from your target user base.
More generally, the very nature of a mobile device guarantees that the device will not always be online. Varying signal quality, a user's movement between cell towers, battery strength or flight mode all impact the device's online availability. Mobile browser-only solutions will be restricted in how they can identify or deal with these changes in network availability.
So why would anyone prescribe a browser-only approach for mobile SDP offerings? The answer is simple: it's easy (and perhaps a tad lazy). By limiting implementations to those within a mobile browser, a platform vendor relies upon the mobile browser's support for AJAX, Comet and XMLHttpRequest behind the scenes. This approach, sadly, can never be sufficient for universal real-time delivery of data to corporate or retail mobile users.
None of this, however, should preclude mobile devices from being valid SDP clients.
A more robust solution for mobile client access is one that supports both mobile browser-based access and native mobile applications. One need look no further than the hugely successful iPhone as an example of a platform that supports both. On its initial release, the iPhone supported only web based applications, but has subsequently offered developers a rich set of tools and APIs to create native applications alongside mobile browser applications. These features includes notification services that can invoke specific application logic on the occurrence of some predefined event - such as a price hitting a certain level. Mobile SDP clients can and should take advantage of such infrastructure where appropriate.
Today, Nirvana MQ supports both native mobile applications as well as AJAX and Comet based web applications running within the mobile browser. By supporting both approaches, Nirvana MQ provides choice and flexibility. Nirvana MQ's native APIs for mobile devices ensure that the full power and features available on mobile platforms are made available to developers. This is accomplished by providing native libraries for mobile devices rather than asking developers to inappropriately shoehorn their applications into generic mobile web technologies. By providing your mobile SDP as a native application, the result is a richer user experience that will compete well in this exciting new mobile SDP market.