I recently was sent an article by a client that is considering whether creating an application for the iPhone would be an important step in marketing their new apparel company. The article, Splinternet? Growing Variety of Devices Presents Content Challenge, predicted that the future of content publishing will be made increasingly difficult because there are so many different platforms and devices (iPhone, Web Browsers, Email, Blackberry, etc) to publish to, especially with the introduction of the iPad.
Right now, web developers have to develop for 5 main browsers on 2 different OS systems. Many aspects are the same, but they still display web content differently. Enough so that we are always developing and testing across all browsers. It’s not that easy. Email is another animal entirely. Many of these devices are showing web content using browser standards (Blackberry, iPhone and iPad) already, so developing web content for them isn’t that much more difficult (as long as they work in the 5 main browsers). Building a mobile application is a bit more challenging, as the article stated. Since there are not standards, you have to build a separate one for each device.
We are already developing content for websites, email and banner ads, so throwing multiple applications into the mix isn’t going to kill us. In the end, it comes down to designing the right marketing strategies and determining which platform(s) will help to achieve those strategies best.
