• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, June 11, 2010

Is there hope for a better mobile Web? The term has often been called an oxymoron because of how lousy the experience of accessing the Internet on a cell phone can be. Slow connection speeds, small screen size, and Web sites that haven't been customized for mobile devices are some of the factors contributing to the problem.

A study last year by usability expert Jakob Nielsen compared the mobile Web to the desktop circa 1994. But with the announcement Thursday of content delivery network Akamai acquiring mobile startup Velocitude, help could be on the way. Never heard of Velocitude? Me neither. The company focuses on tailoring sites to the mobile Web according to the type of device they appear on.

Akamai plans to marry Velocitude's customization technology with its ability to speed the loading of content onto Web sites to help make accessing the mobile Web less of a headache for end users. The larger takeaway is that a Web services giant like Akamai is turning its attention more fully to the mobile space.

The company boasts of operating 60,000 content-storing servers in 900 networks around the world, as well as customers including Adobe, Apple, Hitachi, Microsoft, MTV Networks and SAP. The Velocitude deal would presumably help Akamai allow publishers to offer more complex, media-centric sites to mobile devices. The company's HD network, launched last year, already includes video delivery to the iPhone.

And while the number of people with video-capable phones is still small, the audience is growing. In its latest Three Screen Report released today, Nielsen said the U.S. mobile video audience crossed the 20 million mark for the first time ever in 2010's first quarter.

With the launch of the iPad, the emergence of tablet devices as another portable platform for media consumption is likely also fueling Akamai's growing interest in mobile.

"We've been talking to our customers that the key for them [is], they need to be able to deliver to three screens over IP seamlessly... whether delivering to a broadband computer and IP-enabled or connected TV, whether that's through a direct connection, Wi-Fi, gaming console, or some other device, or a cell phone or a PDA," said Akamai CEO Paul Sagan during the company's fourth quarter earnings conference call earlier this year.

The end result would hopefully be a more consistent user experience across all platforms. That would help reduce fragmentation across scores of different handsets and other devices, and accelerate growth of the mobile audience, with ad spending to follow.

Lately much of the focus for major Web publishers has been on mobile apps, partly because of the mobile Web's shortcomings. The increased involvement of companies like Akamai, though, could help swing the pendulum back in favor of the mobile Web -- if it can power more app-like features within mobile sites.