Dublin-based firm dotMobi, the global registry for the mobile phone web domain ‘.mobi’, recently had a joint meeting with Enterprise Ireland and the Chinese Ministry of Information to discuss the possibility of creating an infrastructure for the mobile internet all across China.
The mobile phone market in China has a subscriber base of over 500m and this opportunity would offer huge potential to the company.
Unlike .com or .net, the mobile domain .mobi has several hurdles to overcome, one of which is the physical mobile phone itself.
While a developer builds a website for a .com knowing it will display more or less the same way on all PCs with no major hiccups, the .mobi developer has to take into account the myriad phone manufacturers, models, operating systems and applications that leave a thousand different possible compatibility combinations.
Norbert Grey, VP of finance for dotMobi told Silicon Republic that primary research currently being carried out by the company can potentially solve these problems, opening up the .mobi domain to many more developers.
This research will be completed within the next three months.
Currently there exist over 800,000 .mobi domains, with respected global brands including Ferrari, Google, Barclays, Amazon and Rolls Royce all pitching their stake in the mobile web.
Big brands, says Grey, help move emerging technology beyond the early adopters, encouraging uptake across the middle ground.
The company itself is financially backed by leading technology companies including Microsoft, Google, Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and Vodafone.
By Marie Boran
