On-Device Portals: A Term Ripe For Retirement

'On-device portal', or ODP, is an increasingly common mobile industry term used to describe a class of software products focused on improving the user experience of mobile content services. The problems ODP products aim to overcome are very real; for example, network latency, poor 'look and feel' of mobile applications and inaccessibility of content. However, while ODP products have a role to play in the creation of operators' next-generation portals, they are not themselves panaceas for the complexity operators face.

The role of ODP products in next-generation portals is best understood by an analogy with rich Internet (or rich interactive) applications (RIAs) in the desktop world. Both aim to improve the usability of content and services in very similar ways, with web technologies and services as their foundation. To reinforce this similarity we describe them as rich mobile application (RMA) technologies.

Few software vendors have the potential in the long term to capitalise on this opportunity. As standards and de facto standards emerge on the client side, opportunities for most vendors will crystallise around providing tools on which service providers can build cross-platform services. While operators should take note of ODP and experiment with ODP products as they exist today, they should not be drawn into putting them at the heart of their next generation portals.