Anyone who works within the mobile marketing field knows that there are certain limitations when it comes to engaging and communicating with customers. These limitations are primarily due to carrier restrictions and the technologies that go into mobile devices. Through our membership in the Mobile Marketing Association and our work within the mobile marketing field, we have seen some dramatic improvements over the course of just two years; but the industry still has not taken off like people expected it.

A couple of months ago, every single Twelve Horses employee received an iPhone. During that time, it has been such a pleasure playing with it and discovering what it can do. Of course, there are limitations with it, and you can read a billion blog posts about the things it won’t do but people wish it did. But for any of the faults one might find, they are far outweighed by the leap in mobile web browsing Apple made with the iPhone. It truly is fantastic, and the fact that it also works as a phone, iPod, and video player is just icing on the cake.

How the iPhone will change the mobile marketing landscape is still to be determined, but there could just be a mobile revolution on the way.

Over a year ago, Google released a mobile version of Gmail accessed through your phone’s web browser.  It was nice compared to other mobile applications and pretty easy to use.  Today, they have released a downloadable Java applet for your phone that is suppose to make the experience even better.  Instead of using your phones internal web browser, you actually install the Gmail application directly to your phone.  When you want to check you email account, simply fire up the application.

Downloading was simple.  Open your mobile web browser and point it to http://www.gmail.com/app.  Installation was painless and, with one click, the application started right up (granted I have a Windows Smartphone so your experience may differ).  The first screen prompts you for your username and password.  This can be a little tricky depending on your password and whether your phone has a keyboard or not (triple tapping a mixed case alpha-numeric password is not fun).

This is where things slowed down.  I was presented with the main screen and a loading icon in the upper right of the screen.  My mail never loaded.  I exited the application and re-opened it.  This time I received the message, "Connecting to service, please wait…"  I gave up after ten minutes of not connecting.  I’ll let you know if I ever connect.

tags: Gmail, Google, Mobile

UPDATE: I did get it to work today.  As Robert points out in his comment, the text is almost too small to read on my phone (which has a pretty good resolution).  I found that you could go into the settings and turn the Small Text option off.  Now I am rocking and rolling.  The experience is much better than that of WAP version.

I am excited and encourage to read people like Seth Godin pontificate about the future of mobile.  As a company, we have invested a lot of time and resources into providing mobile solutions and think that the industry will only continue to grow.  I do disagree slightly in what Mr. Godin considers the problem with mobile.  I think the real problem is the carriers (Cingular, Sprint, Verizon, etc) desire to keep customer support calls to a minimum.

They only provide limited handsets and make it difficult for marketers to get extraordinary use cases out because of their concerns about customer complaints.  Due to their stringent processes, in the US it can take 8 - 12 weeks to get a Common Short Code provisioned but yet they require that all commercial related SMS comes from a short code.  I understand the concern of SPAM on their network but they need to find a happy medium if they want it to succeed as a viable channel.