It’s always very exciting to showcase some of the recent work by our users. Please welcome the newest publishers in the Mobify Gallery!

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Japan, second-largest economy in the world, the land of QR-codes, mobile payments and (soon) 4G networks. Here in the West, we hear many rumors about the state of mobile in the Land of the Rising Sun – often about superiority of its mobile ecosystem and hardware. Recently Mobify got a chance to visit, attending Mobile Monday Tokyo and MCPC. What we saw was surprising – it seems that the Japanese smartphone market is about to undergo a major transformation, embracing Android. Here’s why:

1. The “i-mode” mobile web experience looks and feels outdated. It is terrifying how similar most i-mode pages are to sites rendered on a Motorola RAZR, perhaps because the browsers are supplied by the same vendors. Yes, there is lots of content in i-mode and its competitors that millions of people use, but it’s far from a well-designed mobile view or a mobile app in terms of the overall experience. Flash Lite, which is Japan’s way to develop rich mobile interfaces is mostly used for creating landing pages only, handing off links to the browser. In the end, to get a modern browser on a device, a good OS is necessary – LiMo and Symbian, current market leaders in Japan, are already behind in their arms race with Android.

2. Japanese carriers want to control everything, including the OS of their devices. Historically carriers like NTT DoCoMo would order devices directly from manufacturers, specifying everything down to the color. This kind of influence is not possible with Apple – in fact, we’ve heard horror stories about the effort that SoftBank (the Japanese carrier for the iPhone) had to go through to get emoji, a core mobile feature in Japan, included in the 2.2 firmware. Android is the opposite – the carriers can customize it any way they like. That’s why DoCoMo brass proudly carry around the recent white HTC Android device (though often have a feature phone as well).

3. The developer community is increasingly looking at the global market, instead of focusing on Japan alone. We met several iPhone & Android app developers who dream big – their applications are not quite as smooth as the best ones coming out of SV, but quickly getting there. Many in the japanese mobile community are frustrated with the slowing pace of local innovation, especially when it comes to mobile software. Just like developers in the West, they want openness, power and a big international audience – all of which are promised by Android.

The degree to which Android will take off in Japan will also depend on the smartphone/feature phone balance. Not everybody needs the advanced features of a WebKit-equipped mobile, but the economies of scale should eventually make it economical to use Android for all types of devices. A world-class, free mobile OS, combined with outstanding hardware could propel the japanese mobile ecosystem to even greater heights. Google’s renewed focus on the market is no coincidence.

It was great to visit Japan, huge thanks to everyone who helped make the trip happen and supported us on the ground.

It’s always fun to see more quality mobile views launched using Mobify. Here are some of the recent ones that we like the most (even including one for a Saturday Night Live producer)!

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One of the things we often wished for at Mobify is growing a real community around mobile web design. Here and there on the Web one might find groups of people interested in the subject. However, there’s never been a successful venue where one can get definitive answers on all relevant topics, help with developing the mobile version or advice about promoting it. Today, we’re proud to be launching Mobify Community – the social component of Mobify.

We’ve got three goals for it and we need your help to achieve all of them:

1) Create world’s leading resource for best practices, guides and tools related to mobile web design. If you’re wondering about designing websites for the Motorola Droid, or need to know if Blackberry Storm supports float elements, the Community is the place to go to. The ever-expanding Guides section should answer most of your Mobify-related questions. We’ll also work hard to get service vendors like DeviceAnywhere and PerfectoMobile to provide discounts and special offers to all of our members.

2) Connect site owners and mobile web designers in an effective mobile marketplace. Mobify is built to let web designers create amazing mobile experiences. This also means that some of our users prefer having a professional develop their mobile presence (and they’re willing to pay for it!). Visit the Job Board if you’re a web designer looking for new projects or a site owner looking to hire.

3) Have fun and get to know each other : ). Since Mobify launched, we’ve exchanged thousands of emails with fantastic people all around the world. Let’s get together to create the beautiful, effective and fast mobile web of tomorrow.

The Mobify Community is still young – please, come on in and introduce yourself!

We love covering success stories of web designers going mobile. Today we caught up with Aaron Maxwell, president of Hilomath, a fast-growing mobile web development agency out of San Francisco. Their key offering is a mobile website upgrade service they called MobileWebUp. It’s tailored to clients that already have a substantial web presence, and suddenly realize it needs to also work well on mobile.

Mobify: What made you start designing for mobile?

Aaron: Having developed web apps in Silicon Valley for years, I was ready to start my own agency and build a team of designers and engineers. The question was what business focus would have potential for growth in the coming years, as well as making an important contribution to small and mid-sized businesses (a sector I personally enjoy working with).

One day while quietly sitting and mulling it over, it somehow popped into my head that helping businesses reach their best prospects and clients through mobile handhelds met all the criteria. After a few weeks of market research, I was convinced.

There is an even bigger motivation, which wasn’t obvious to me at the beginning. You see, the mobile internet isn’t just another shiny new technology. This shift to making the web truly mobile – which is happening right now, and will take several years to play out – is, in my opinion, going to prove historically significant. It is truly a new mass media, whose reach and power is likely to exceed radio, TV, perhaps even the desktop-oriented Internet.

I believe its emergence will go down in history books as one of humanity’s milestones, nearly up there with the emergence of the Internet itself. Who WOULDN’T want to be involved in that?

(And by the way, if you’re a web designer who wants to get paid to use Mobify to help build the mobile web, send a message to jobs@hilomath.com now
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