Equation Research recently came out with a report analyzing user expectations for the mobile Web.  Their graphic is a well-illustrated visual of the issues that a mobile Web site owner faces when developing a site. In short, poor performance results in users dropping and less likely to return or recommend a site.

Courtesy of Equation Research and Compuware Corp.

While the conclusion may not be surprising, it’s the survey numbers that are worth noting. Interestingly, nearly three-quarters of mobile phone users expect Web sites to load as quickly on their phones as they have on their desktops. When it doesn’t meet expectations – they drop.  And 74 percent will only wait five seconds for the page to load.

How does the problem get resolved? It’s true that network congestion and factors outside a developer’s control can be an issue, but there’s a lot within control to be a major influence on the user experience. It’s time to stop putting the blame on wireless carriers for having poor coverage or an old network. It’s pointless as the carrier in turn puts blame on their governments for not releasing enough spectrum or to YouTube for hogging an amazing 22 percent of the pipe.

From the Equation Research numbers themselves, we know that 77 percent of the top companies’ mobile sites take more than five seconds to load. With everything else being equal (network coverage, etc.), this means that 23 percent of the sites are able to beat the mark and performance. So what are these sites doing right? Optimization and compression. Too many sites rely on the mobile browser to do the work. It’s the lazy approach. Pages are not optimized for the size of the device, often defaulting to the desktop version of the site and relying on the browser to use best fit or zoom technology to provide a decent user experience. Another common issue is the lack of media compression, or even worse, CSS or JavaScript that is not used in the markup. In a wireless environment, bandwidth is critical and needs to be considered carefully when crafting the mobile site. These problems can be solved individually by developers – although it’s a painful process – or with platforms that address device optimization and compression for wireless networks.

Performance is often neglected during development and design, with most of the attention going to UI and feature capabilities in the mobile device. Yet these numbers from Equation Research tell a different story – build a poorly performing site and you may not have many users, regardless of your features. The good news is that it’s not necessarily a trade-off between speed and function. With the right architectural approach, a high-performing, feature-rich mobile site is certainly possible. Even on an older wireless network;even in poor coverage areas. It’s time to stop blaming the network. Seventy-seven percent of the top companies with 5+ second response times need to start redesigning their mobile sites!

G is for Global. Google's secure sign-in system now reaches 150 countries in 40 languages.

Today’s top news:

Google takes two-step authentication global in 40 languages

Google has rolled out its two-step verification sign-in system to more than 150 countries in 40 languages. The security feature was introduced in February to help protect Google account holders from threats like password compromise and identity theft, but was available only in English. By entering a one-time verification code, users can make it much more difficult for anyone else to access their accounts.

Samsung smartphone growth helps mobile market

Korean electronics giant Samsung is shipping 10 per cent more smartphones than a year ago, helping the overall mobile phone market grow by 11.3 per cent in the second quarter of this year, according to IDC. The mid to high-end segments of the smartphone market were Samsung’s strongest performing areas, thanks to its flagship models the Galaxy S and Galaxy S II. All regions showed increased demand and shipments.

Android Still Dominates Phones, But What About the Rest of Mobile?

As Android spreads across multiple devices, Google’s operating system continues to dominate on smartphones. A report released Thursday backs that up, showing that Android remains the top smartphone operating system in the United States.

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A monthly subscription brings your fave British classics to the new and improved iPlayer.

Today’s top news:

Global BBC iPlayer app arrives in Europe, puts archive Auntie in iPad

iPlayer is available in Europe from today, via an iPad app stuffed full of classic BBC telly. Fawlty Towers, Top Gear and Doctor Who are among the programmes available through the Global iPlayer app, which differs from the iPlayer we know and love in a few crucial ways. The Global iPlayer app, announced in December, “looks and feels similar to the UK iPlayer, but functions in a different way”. International viewers pay a monthly subscription, and instead of the seven-day catch-up service we’re familiar with, the app will showcase selected BBC shows, old and new.

With Back to Gecko, Mozilla looks to the mobile market
Mozilla, the nonprofit organization behind the popular Firefox browser, is looking to expand its operation – straight into the mobile market. Writing on the company wiki, Mozilla reps said they were in the early stages of developing an open-source operating system called Back to Gecko, which would be collectively authored, and work on both tablet computers and smartphones.

Facebook looks for its share of mobile apps revenue
Facebook has been slow to enter the mobile commerce game, though it has been long expected to expand its platform into an app store and other services. Now the social networking giant is said to be bringing its digital currency, Credits, to mobile browsers, allowing developers to sell content and other items on smartphones and tablets. This could make Facebook an alternative pull on mobile users’ spending on virtual goods and content, reducing the takings of Google and Apple.

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Face recognition will be baked deeply into Apple's iOS 5 and will support a number of clever features.

Today’s top news:

First Windows ‘Mango’ Phone Unveiled
The first smartphone based on the new “Mango” edition of Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform was unveiled on Wednesday in Tokyo. The phone is the first of several handsets due over the next few months, that Microsoft hopes will signal its return to the smartphone market as a serious player. (Video of the new phone and its launch is available on YouTube.)

Mozilla plans mobile OS to rival Apple and Microsoft

The project, known as Boot to Gecko (B2G), is an attempt to break “the stranglehold” of mobile operating systems such as those run by Apple and Microsoft. Mozilla researcher Andreas Gal said the project would expand the capabilities of web applications and described B2G as “a complete, standalone operating system for the open web”.

iOS 5 To Have Powerful Face Detection

After Apple’s purchase of face recognition software provider Polar Rose, we were unsure what Apple had planned. Now, thanks to a little 9to5 mac digging we know that face recognition (FaceRec? FaceTimeRec? FaceSnatch?) will be baked deeply into iOS 5 and support a number of clever features including, potentially, the same wacky effects available in Lion’s Photo Booth app.

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An HTML5 mobile app no doubt can smoothly expand into a tablet or laptop-based Web app.

In Antenna’s whitepaper on Human Centered Mobility, one of the more important topics we discussed is the key concept of building HTML5 Web apps not only as the primary means of delivering a mobile Web application, but also for utilizing it as your primary Web app modeling framework. My own belief is that building HTML5 (and of course CSS and JavaScript) apps not only serves the modeling purpose, but will likely prove ‘good enough’ at least 85 percent of the time to actually serve as the final mobile Web app product – even in the case where the original specification called for building a native app.

Further – and this is often lost in translation – the resulting HTML5 mobile app can easily be expanded into a far more robust tablet, or laptop-based Web app. The ability to expand mobile apps in this way will meet a fast-rising need in strategic enterprise app development to cross every possible channel with one core code base. I absolutely believe that the starting point always needs to be the mobile app DNA – it is far easier to expand apps to bigger platforms than to shrink apps to smaller platforms. HTML5 is the perfect means to achieving this huge enterprise goal.

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Consumer apps should be fueled by enterprise-grade features in order to fly.

For as long as I can remember, there’s always been this notion that things that are carrier grade are better; more robust than enterprise grade, and thus more so than consumer grade. While many users would not be able to tell the difference, you have to carefully look at how these products are built. They are designed with different specifications and requirements. More recently, the major trend that’s plowing through enterprise IT is this concept called the “consumerization of the enterprise.” Simply put, it basically means that enterprise employees are becoming consumers with consumer-like expectations, usage patterns, and behaviors.

Because of this consumerization, enterprises are adopting and demanding that their technologies be more user-friendly, have consumer-esque UI, and be intuitive. I think this is a great thing. It used to be the case that the technology people used at work was the state of the art – your Windows 3.1 PC at work with a mouse versus your DOS 5.0 PC at home. Recently, it’s been your quad-core iMac at home versus your four-year-old work PC that allows you to go down the block to get a latte before the login screen comes up, and then hold a staff meeting between when you log in and when you can launch a browser. Mobility is driving the enterprise pendulum back.

But here’s the danger – some people out there think that just because we’re taking a consumer product or technology and enabling it in an enterprise setting, that enterprise features are no longer needed. Cloud computing is not running your enterprise apps in a consumer grade environment. It’s taking your enterprise apps and running it in a carrier grade environment. The fundamental robustness of the enterprise-grade or carrier-grade platform should not be discounted!

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Sixty-nine percent of UK mobile banking consumers worry about its security. And UK banks are slow to change the tide.

Last week, Antenna rode into town. London town, to be precise. Antenna CEO Jim Hemmer, its CMO Jim Somers, and I, met to talk about mobile banking (I make this sound like a big deal; they came over from New Jersey, and I had to come all the way from Guildford, Jewel of the South.) And we came armed – with a pedigree (our already-delivered mobile solutions for ING Direct, RBS, Garanti, among others) – and with fresh consumer research from YouGov, which polled over 2,000 adults in the UK on their mobile banking habits on our behalf. Jim Somers details the U.S. findings in his post.

While in town, we met journalists (follow this link to read about what happened when Reuters met with Jim Hemmer), and analysts, as well as senior executives from almost all of the major UK banks at a round-table event, which we and IDC organized at Pewterer’s Hall, the home of the Worshipful Company of Pewterers. Such halls are scattered around the city of London. (Basically, if you were manufacturing or trading in fifteenth-century England, you got a fancy organizational title and your own hall.)

Here are the results of the consumer research:

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