It would appear that we owe the UK’s mobile operators a small apology, or a couple of them at least. A couple of days ago, making a guest appearance on the Chartered Institute of Public Relations’ TV channel, I was asked what the one thing is that a brand should do with mobile if they did nothing else. I suggested they should build a mobile-optimised site, as a ‘full-fat’ site viewed on a smartphone – no matter how smart – is not a great experience. If anyone wanted to see this in action, I suggested, they could put the UK mobile operators’ URLs into their phone’s browser to see what I meant.

The remark was made in good faith, based on my experiences the last time I did this myself, but repeating the exercise last night on the train on the way home from the office, I was delighted to find that both Vodafone and O2 in the UK now have fully mobile-optimised sites that you are redirected to when you enter the main website URL in your phone’s browser. Orange, T-Mobile and 3, so far as I can see, still don’t, or if they do, there does not seem to be a redirect in place. Still, they are in good company. The same also applies to a number of handset makers, including HTC, Nokia, and, most surprisingly of all perhaps, Apple…