By Nisheeth Mohan

Mobile devices have changed the way people access content online.

With a mobile device users can get connected anytime, anywhere on a staggering variety of unique devices.

The biggest challenge in the mobile market today is supporting the hundreds of different mobile handsets operating over the complex carrier network that all have to provide a satisfying end user experience.

Let's contrast mobile and the Web.

On the Web if your application has been tested on two browsers and two or three operating systems, you know that well over 90 percent of your target audience will see and access the content as planned.

In the mobile market, your developers have to plan for thousands of configurations consisting of mobile devices with varying screen sizes and capabilities, operating systems and browsers.

Content that looks great on one device may look odd or even unreadable on another.

Today, mobile Web developers are working with major handicaps as they attempt to debug, optimize and maintain their sites.

Designing a site with broad appeal is particularly difficult, and international seems almost untenable, unless, of course, you have a design team that is global as well.

However, that is not a luxury many of you can afford. So how do you today ensure that the application works consistently on the different devices that are popular, for example, in Europe and Asia as well as the US?

It is a credit to mobile content designers that mobile content is as good as it is.

There are some sites like AOL and New York Times that have a lot of content on their mobile sites.

However well as these sites perform, they cannot offer the full experience of the Web.

As end users become more sophisticated and demand the polished sophistication of Web applications on their tiny mobile devices, things are going to have to change in the development world.

To stay competitive, mobile developers need better tools that offer fast, reliable, iterative testing on multiple device types.

Content may look great on your Motorola Razr, but how do you know whether a Nokia N70 supports .GIF images?

Does the new LG slide screen support a 167 by 30 .GIF ad image or does it crop it to leave out important information?

Is the new Dark Knight game on ATT's homedeck compatible with the Blackberry Perl? Maintaining a private lab stocked with one of each of the major device models currently in use is cost-prohibitive, yet commercial third-party test beds can leave developers competing for resources while on a tight deadline.

Queuing up for commercial device pools doesn't give you a lot of flexibility.

In the dim and distant past, programmers scheduled time to run programs on the big mainframes at universities and corporate sites -- often at odd hours, or hung around waiting for free time, often with sleeping bags in tow.

Who wants to relive that experience? Having access to a testing environment that doesn't make your design team wait around is the only way to develop a great mobile site faster and with better results.

Is help on the way? I'll address this in detail next month.

The fall tradeshow season promises innovative new strategies and products for mobile content development and testing.

The mobile market is the fastest growing component of the online community today. With more than half the world owning and utilizing mobile devices, the mobile development community deserves faster, better, and more cost-effective development tools.

In fact, as a marketer, you know that the future growth of this market depends on it.

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