By Nisheeth Mohan

The mobile market is exploding with new technology and new content. However, mobile content is successful only when it is easily discovered and quickly delivered.

Content providers are employing a variety of tools to reach their consumers, including mobile sites, client applications and SMS messaging.

In all the excitement, it is easy to forget a crucial component of the mobile mix -- the end-user experience.

Today's mobile end user is open to new applications and services experiences in the mobile format -- but only if they meet some pretty stringent criteria: mobile content must be available quickly and reliably, end-user experience must be consistent and the content must provide easy and intuitive interaction.

While this might sound like a piece of cake to the content provider, the multiple dependencies that take a product from the design lab to the end user have a lot to do with the final result.

Carriers, aggregators and the mobile handsets themselves combine in multiple ways that can yield multiple results -- not all of them leading to positive user experience.

For example, content providers want to get more users accessing application or content.

However, as content popularity increases and more users are accessing the content at the same time, performance can degrade. Without constant monitoring and course correction, popularity can lead to impacted user experience and loss of customers.

Last October at Mobile Web Expo, Nokia, Microsoft and others noted that people were so used to their online experience that they wanted the same rich experience to be translated to their mobile.

This creates an interesting challenge: If mobile sites try to duplicate the online experience, along with functionality and speed, they will fail because mobile is inherently slower.

Mobile enterprises have to identify the right threshold between functionality and performance -- and there is no one right answer.

If you look at four of the leading portals -- Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL -- you will see varying implementation styles.

AOL pages are filled with functionality and images, and it is highly interactive. Because a lot of functionality is downloaded on each page, it takes only a small number of clicks to access content.

Google and Yahoo download more quickly, but require many more clicks to get to content.

MSN offers two different sites, the Live search site and the MSN portal.

Which strategy will prevail? Or will something else emerge that will capture the interest -- and loyalty -- of mobile users?

This is a nascent market, and it's too early to predict the winners.

One thing is for sure: end users will not tolerate slow downloads or download failures for long.

As content providers continue to provide new functionality and delivery strategies, it will behoove them to keep their eye on the Holy Grail of the mobile market: stimulating, engaging, accessible and reliable end-user experiences.

Nisheeth Mohan is product manager for mobile solutions and technology at for Keynote Systems Inc., a mobile and Internet test and measurement services firm in San Mateo, CA. Reach him at