Reddick said the dominance of high capability mobile handsets is inevitable and that smart marketers and smart media organizations should "follow the smartphone."
"My advice to you is to ignore the feature phone," he said. Instead, concentrate on the devices that deliver rich messages.
While Mobile Web is a good start, apps go far beyond them, Reddick said. They reside in the handset itself rather than somewhere in the cloud. That means they can take advantage of the hardware itself by enabling GPS, using the camera, taking advantage of the accelerometer and surrounding the user with branding.
The secret to success, however, is taking your efforts beyond a single application. To reach a substantial audience, Reddick said, you must build apps for multiple platforms. Even then, remember that "people do not want the lowest common denometer," he said. You can't force Blackberry users to access a feature through buttons common only on an iPhone, and vice versa. Each app must use the unique environment of the platform it was built for.
Apps build brand, loyalty and audience, Reddick said. But they can also make money: that controlled, in-machine feature of an app means it is the perfect tool for premium content.
Steve McGuigan from Handmark will be at the RJI Going Mobile conference for mobile editors April 19-20.
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Reddick made a great aside about the iPad. Although Handmark builds iPad apps, he said it is too bulky to be which a "mobile" device but is simply a "portable" device:
"The iPad is not the one you will be the first to hear it on."
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