100 Most Popular Sites on the Internet Evaluated for Mobile Readiness

100 Most Popular Sites on the Internet Evaluated for Mobile Readiness

March 28, 2007

dotMobi Investigates Top Mobile-Ready -- and Not-So-Ready
-- Web Sites

    ORLANDO, Fla., March 28 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- CTIA
Wireless -- dotMobi, the company behind the .mobi domain --
the first and only Internet address designed specifically
for mobile phones -- today announced its evaluation of the
mobile readiness of the 100 most visited sites on the
Internet. 

    Using a list generated by Alexa(R) Internet on January
23, 2007, dotMobi evaluated the most visited sites using
http://ready.mobi, a unique testing tool produced by
dotMobi that incorporates industry standards set by the W3C
consortium and key investors including Ericsson, Microsoft
and Nokia. 

    The tool at http://ready.mobi simulates a mobile device
and accessed each of the top 100's PC-based web page and its
.mobi (or other mobile) address, if applicable.  The report
follows a stringent assessment, and scores each site from
one (least mobile ready) to five (most mobile ready). 

    According to this scale, the top 10 mobile ready sites
are Google.com, WashingtonPost.com, Ask.com, Yahoo.com,
Flickr.com, Live.com, Facebook.com, Overstock.com,
Weather.com and USAToday.com.  Only three of the top 10
most popular web sites -- Yahoo, Google and Facebook --
scored greater than a three out of five on the Mobile Ready
Report. 

    Overall, sites that used a .mobi address tended to
score well because they generally followed the dotMobi
standards and best practices to ensure an optimal mobile
experience. 

    The report indicated that many of the otherwise top web
sites are not optimized for easy mobile viewing by
consumers.  These top 100 sites averaged a score of 1.3 out
of five, illustrating the need for organizations to tailor,
for mobile phone users, the high-quality content they
provide on their PC-based web sites.  On average, just the
home pages of the tested sites cost a hefty $1.50 and took
almost 40 seconds per page to download. 

    Consumer research has consistently shown that a site's
page structure, appearance, download cost and download
speed are primary reasons why users avoid accessing the web
on their mobile phone.  Despite this, more than four mobile
phones are sold for every one PC that's sold globally and,
in turn, more and more consumers are accessing the internet
via their mobile phones.

    "There's plenty of room for improvement because
the mobile internet is still developing," said Neil
Edwards, CEO of dotMobi.  "The results indicate that
consumers will most likely not have a good experience when
they want to view their favorite sites from a mobile phone.
 The .mobi domain provides a viable, easy-to-manage platform
for even the most popular sites to optimize their content
for mobile phones."

    To view the top 100 sites with their http://ready.mobi
score in detail, visit
http://pc.mtld.mobi/mobilenet/Top100.htm .

    The tests performed in this evaluation can be repeated
for these top sites and any others using the publicly
accessible test at http://ready.mobi.

    About dotMobi

    dotMobi (the informal name of mTLD Top Level Domain,
Ltd.), a joint venture company based in Dublin, Ireland
with offices in Washington, DC, and Beijing, is leading the
development of internet usage from mobile phones with the
.mobi domain. Unique among domain name providers, dotMobi
ensures that services and sites developed around .mobi are
optimized for use by mobile devices. On-the-go consumers
can have confidence that an internet site or service will
work from their mobile device when using the .mobi
address.

    dotMobi is backed by leading mobile operators, network
and device manufacturers, and internet content providers,
including Ericsson, GSM Association, Hutchison 3,
Microsoft, Nokia, Orascom Telecom, Samsung Electronics,
Syniverse, T-Mobile, Telefonica Moviles, TIM and Vodafone.
dotMobi is also a sponsor of W3C's Mobile Web Initiative. 

    For more information on .mobi domains and how to
register .mobi domains, visit http://dotmobi.mobi .  Visit
the dotMobi blog at http://blog.mobi .


    For more information, please contact:

     Vance Hedderel
     dotMobi (mobile Top Level Domain, Ltd.)
     Tel:   [phone]
     Email: [e-mail]

     Todd Witkemper
     A&R Edelman for dotMobi
     Tel:   [phone]
     Email: [e-mail]