Pre-iPhone, says Cameron Moll, principal interaction designer at LDS Church and author of the influential e-book Mobile Web Design, companies typically took one of four approaches to the mobile Web: 1) do nothing and let mobile users scroll their way around sites designed for PC viewing; 2) streamline sites by removing images and styling, making them more manageable for mobile devices; 3) use stylesheets, a tool that allows developers to create different versions of a Web site for different devices; or 4) create an entirely different second site, optimized for mobile users.
Indeed, despite the improved browsing experience the iPhone offers, the do-nothing strategy, as well as approaches two and three, still have a fundamental problem: They ignore the issue of context.
Nadav Savio, now a user experience designer at Google (GOOG), and mobile usage expert Jared Braiterman, founder of Jared Research, wrote in a 2007 paper, "we must focus… on mobile people, not mobile devices. In other words, we are not merely shrinking in size a Web experience, but creating an entirely new platform for communication and interaction."
Full story: http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jun2008/id20080623_013282.htm?link_position=link15
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