Moving to the Mobile Web

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But the mobile context also lends itself to different types of content. One popular iPhone app provides a perfect example: Blood Alcohol Level—a calculator that estimates how drunk you are based on what you've been drinking, your weight, your gender, etc. It's hard to imagine someone having one too many glasses during a nice dinner at home and thinking, "I'm going to start up my computer so that I can check my blood alcohol level on the Web." On the other hand, being able to look up that information on a mobile device when trying to decide whether or not to drive home makes a lot of sense.

Or another example: Kayak, the popular travel-deal search engine, has an iPhone site. Not only is it streamlined (no images or styling, etc) so as to be fast-loading, but instead of passing users onto an airline Web site to make the purchase, as Kayak does if you're on a PC, the mobile version gives you a phone number. Voice is a much easier way to complete your goal of purchasing a ticket if you're on a mobile device. Context is king. And more companies are beginning to think about creating iPhone- or mobile-optimized sites. And, of course, those companies that work with designers and utility experts to develop a context-appropriate, easy-to-use site will be the most successful.

Whrrl's iPhone Version Arrives July 11

"There are a lot of entrepreneurs coming off the sidelines," says KPCB's Murphy. Since announcing the iFund in early March, the firm has received more than 2,000 plans, 20 times more than they typically receive for the mobile space. The first app to receive funding, Whrrl, is a location-based "social utility" that uses recommendations from your network of friends to suggest, say, a nearby restaurant or fun thing to do. Created by Seattle-based Pellago and already available on other mobile devices, Whrrl's iPhone version will launch when Apple opens its App Store on July 11.

To be clear, the iPhone is hardly the first mobile device to offer Web browsing in the U.S. The Treo and some BlackBerries have offered it for years, as well as high-end Nokias (NOK). But there are key differences with the iPhone, differences that are relevant to the design of the mobile Web. First of all, the iPhone is controlled from top to bottom by Apple, a level of control unprecedented in the U.S. mobile phone market.

It has used that control—of the form factor, the interaction design, the operating system, and the software development environment—to create a simple, intuitive user experience. This superior browsing experience will both bring more users to the mobile Web and raise consumer expectations of the mobile browsing experience. And because Apple controls the platform, it is able to iterate, improve the experience, and introduce new features or applications more quickly than other handset makers, who must work with service providers, or the service providers, who often work with third-party developers.

Finding the Profit in the Mobile Web

"Clearly from a standpoint of mobile design and developing new mobile apps, you have had a very constrained ecosystem around the carriers," says Murphy. "Apple changed that."

It's still early days in the development of the mobile Web. The majority of the iPhone Web apps currently available are cool little tools created by a developer for kicks (think Blood Alcohol Level) or because they want a better way to access a Web site (such as Hahlo, an iPhone-optimized front door to Twitter created by Dean Robinson, a Web developer at the University of Newcastle in Australia). "A lot of people get that the mobile Web has huge potential, but most companies have a hard time understanding how to profit from it and how to leverage it to meet their needs," says Moll.

You could have said the same about the early Web. But this will change—and that's good news for interaction designers. Already, several firms have emerged as leaders in designing for the mobile space, including HUGE in New York, and Punchcut, Adaptive Path, and Gotodesign, all in San Francisco. As content developers rush to the mobile Web and companies already in the mobile space try to match the mobile Web experience offered by the iPhone, there will be plenty of work.

Again, Apple's device is just the catalyst. As Moll says, "Is the iPhone the future of the mobile Web? I don't think so. Ubiquity is the future of the Web." And ubiquity requires great interaction design.

Click to see a slide show of some of the smartest iPhone Web applications.

Jessie Scanlon is the senior writer for Innovation & Design on BusinessWeek.com.