A Wicked Chicken & Egg Problem

It wasn't too long ago that space was the "final frontier." Today's frontiers are no longer "final"...just the "next one," and our generation of web programmers' next great frontier is development for the mobile platform.

As with any frontier challenge there are hurdles. Mine, for now, is to find a reasonable, economic solution to analytics for the mobile platform. There are services out there that can provide limited tracking analytics and such, but for a hefty fee. Even if you agree to their pricing structures, they all rely on the basic 1x1 pixel trick that traditional web programmers have used for years so why would we pay them to do what we can do ourselves anyway? Besides, Google and its compatriots are starting to seriously frown on the 1x1 pixel trick and we won't be able to do that much longer anyway.

In response to the burgeoning demand for analyzing mobile traffic, Google is trying to develop an analytics platform specific to mobile. It's just that most mobile browsers don't support JavaScript and AJAX - the 2 key technologies that current analytics rely on. They can build it for the newer smart phones like Droid & iPhone whose mobile Mozilla & Safari-based browsers offer limited JavaScript & AJAX support, but that leaves a goodly bit of the rest of the mobile market out in the cold with respect to a site-developer/owners need to track traffic.

The kicker comes in the hardware - the hardware makers and service providers WANT for their traffic to be found and accounted for. They WANT companies to know that thousands of people use their product to surf the web. It's in their best interest to make phones with browsers that are user friendly and can be found in analytical data. But to make a phone that uses a browser that supports the languages and standards needed to produce that traffic data increases the cost of the phone to the consumer - which risks alienating consumers because of price. I can name at least a dozen people who drool over my iPhone (some of them on it, but that's another issue) but who don't like the $300 price tag that comes with it. They'd happily spend their days surfing the web and paying to download apps - if the upfront cost was cheaper.

So here's the wicked chicken & egg bit...I want cheap analytics on mobile traffic. Google wants to give me cheap analytics on mobile traffic but can't give me ALL the data I want because 1) there are still older phones or phones with older/non-current-analytic-technology compliant browsers, 2) Google itself frowns on the simple tech that will provide at least some data for the remaining phone/browser set, and 3) hardware & service provider companies want to give me the data I need but to do so would require them to raise costs and spend more money convincing the consumer that the cost increase is worth it to have the latest and coolest gadget, but 4) many consumers are reluctant to spend the money for the "new coolness" and sticking with their older phones & browsers, which means 5) I have to find a cheap way to account for their traffic if I want a cleaner, truer data set, which - for now at least - still means the 1x1 pixel trick because I can't use JavaScript or AJAX.

And we're back at the beginning again.