I regularly get stats sent to me by both clients are others noting the high percentage of people accessing the web on an iPhone as compared to other devices (i.e. iPhone users want to use apps and mobile services, other devices users don't) . These stats are regularly doing the rounds at the moment and as far as I'm concerned are quite misleading. Whilst right now this may well be the case, a large part of the reason behind this is that the iPhone was one of the first phones on the market that truly centred the interface & experience around online activity, and a great apps market. Every one of the other handset makers have raced to catch up. Although there's still a little way to go now, for the most part the latest round of phones have caught up pretty well, and I fully expect the percentage of mobile web surfing on other devices to steadily rise as a result.

Also it should be noted that the iPhone is usually still the more expensive option when compared to a Nokia or Samsung (or even a Google Android phone in many cases). Therefore when the other makers are starting to offer a similar experience and capabilities to the iPhone, you are left with the "hype" and the very large marketing drive behind the iPhone. The heavy marketing drive often creates an untrue idea that "everyone's using an iPhone".

I also speak from personal experience here - I was considering buying an iPhone when my last Nokia phone came up for upgrade. However when looking at the cost, and seeing that the latest Nokia touchscreen was available on a far cheaper package and at zero upfront cost, it was a no-brainer for me. I don't think I'm alone in following this approach..

To summarise, my advice for companies would be not to try and jump aboard the iPhone bandwagon without a strong reason to - it may well be that for your target demographic, iPhone usage is disproportionately higher and therefore actually worth the cost of targeting separately. It may well also be the case that you wish to take advantage of the current marketing drive behind the iPhone and build a marketing campaign on top of an iPhone app - i.e. "We're cutting edge and cool by association". This can certainly be worth the cost outlay for some, but simply having an iPhone app for the purpose of opening up your site/services to mobile users will not be the better option when compared with a well thought out mobile website.

We struggled with the same questions developing our SMStheJOB service.

We decided that rather than wait for the all one common bells & whistles mobile platform job ad that we would just launch with an SMS based job alert that Job Seekers could reply to and in doing so motivate our server to forward their application including their resume to the Advertisers email box.

Surprising us was the fact that Job Seekers we had not expected to pick up on an SMS based service are getting involved. Engineers for example and legal professionals are now part of our subscriber base and receiving SMS job alerts.

We do intend to migrate to a more bells and whistles mobile technology as the space starts to zero in on a winner in the meantime our SMS version is demonstrating that Job Seekers are keen for a Mobile interface.

Thanks
Rob Wise
SMStheJOB