Wordpress goes mobile but misses the poi…

by Nic Haralambous on 21/10/2009

Wordpress goes mobile but misses the point.

Mashable! today reports that Wordpress has launched two new mobile themes. But “mobile” here refers to iPhones and Android handsets not to the mobile market that we, in Africa, are referring to.

I’m interested to know how many 3rd world (low broadband) countries have Wordpress blogs. What is the number? Is it ten thousand, fifty thousand, more or less?

The reason I ask is because I have a feeling that if Wordpress was to start focusing on lower-end handset models in the mobile market they would open themselves up to a massively neglected market. The market that can’t afford “smartphones”, the market that can’t afford laptops, computers and fixed-line internet.

It’s interesting to think that in 1st world countries the term “mobile” refers to iPhone handsets or “smartphones”. What of the rest of the world? What of the people who don’t have these phones and can’t view the content they are looking for because it costs too much.

Meeting with Marc Smith this month was an eye-opener for many reasons. Firstly he told me that Obama winning a Nobel peace prize was not regarded in very high esteem by Americans. Why? Because if Europeans like their president there must be something wrong him. This seems to echo in the approach of many a large company playing in the online/mobile space.

Why is Wordpress not going after the African market? Why are they not providing those without fixed-line broadband an outlet for their mobile phones to read and write blogs?

To me it feels like a lack of insight and foresight.

nharalambous@gmail.com

There are 3 comments in this article:

  1. 21/10/2009Conrad Strydom says:

    Hey Nick,

    Actually there will be a theme for lower end phones as well, WPTouch will cater for the high end touch phones, and an adaption of Wordpress Mobile Edition will cater for all other phones that visit Wordpress.com blogs.

    The experience of actually blogging from ANY phone still sucks though I must say and leaves a lot to be desired.

  2. 21/10/2009Nic says:

    It may suck but if you don’t know any other way it fast becomes the best way to blog! :) Thanks for the update about the themes.

  3. 30/11/2009Rich Gubby says:

    Hi – there is a plugin that will cater for all handsets – it’s called the Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin and it will work on all phones from WML all the way to high end touch phones.

    Check it out here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wapple-architect/ and let me know what you think!

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