3GSM: DotMobi strengthens mobile web with new products

DotMobi plans to use this week's 3GSM conference in Barcelona to prove that it is more than just a domain registry by announcing a set of tools and certification standards to ease mobile website creation.

From today, a brand new programme called Go Mobile! will be made available to domain registrars and resellers so that they can help their customers to build mobile sites more easily and speedily by making free use of a customised version of Akmin Technologies' dotMobi-compliant MobiSiteGalore.

It will initially be available in English, with plans to offer the tool in Chinese and other European languages in the near future.

DotMobi also plans to launch a directory search service this summer that will further broaden its portfolio and help add to the popularity of the mobile internet.

There are three phases to dotMobi's evolution, according to Neil Edwards, the company's chief executive.

The first was the introduction of the domain, the second was to get initial sites and content up and running and the third will be the introduction of new products and services aimed at ramping up website quality and volume further.

"We're not just a domain company. We obviously launched the domain first and now what is happening is we're rolling out other services and products that have been in development for the last year and a half," said Edwards.

"We will be rolling out a series of products in the next year that will allow developers to build mobile sites cost efficiently and easily that will work on any network or phone in the world. We're starting to roll these products out now and will be making a dev.mobi announcement at 3GSM."

Since the availability of the .mobi suffix last year, the domain guardian has seen demand for site names soar.

To date it boasts 130 partners worldwide and 375,000 registered names and this figure looks set to rise rapidly, according to Edwards.

"We're ahead of plan and content is coming along behind all of the names," he said.

"We're signing up one thousand customers a day at the moment and hope to have one million customers by the end of the summer."

To increase the proliferation of mobile sites and assure quality content, dotMobi has launched a premium names application process for four domain names: news.mobi, ringtones.mobi, sports.mobi and weather.mobi.

It is currently in the request for proposal (RFP) phase and is accepting applications until February 16.

"We are testing the market to find a way to allocate names as rather than giving a domain to someone who comes along with the most money, we want to give it to the people who also build content around that name," said Edwards.

Cabbies.mobi and pistoff.mobi are just two examples of such sites that have recently gone live.

Despite dotMobi's pioneering approach it is aware that it will take more than the efforts of one player for internet-on-the-move to reach its full potential.

Edwards said: "We don't think we're the only solution for the mobile web as we're only one of several initiatives and I think it's going to be 2008 when things really take off. It's indicative of the fact that people want to use the internet on their phones. I know I do all the time and I'm not that extraordinary."

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