The Internet has spoiled us. We tend to oversimplify the technology powering the Internet. The Internet is actually a complex ecosystem made up of many parts that must all work together seamlessly. When you enter a URL into a web browser, you don’t think about everything that has to happen to see a web page. When you send an email, you don’t care about all the servers, switches, and software that separate you from your recipient. Everything you do on the Internet happens in fractions of a second. And you have the perception that all of this happens for free.

If you talk to people unfamiliar with mobile, you might find that they quickly assume that the mobile ecosystem is exactly like the Internet, and that all the same rules apply. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Mobile is an entirely unique ecosystem and, like the Internet, it is made up of many different parts that must all work seamlessly together. However, with mobile technology, the parts are different, and because you can use mobile devices to access the Internet, that means that not only do you need to understand the facets of the Internet, but you also need to understand the mobile ecosystem.

To put it another way, think of the Internet as a great cloud in the sky. When we want to pull something from it, we use a tool, like a piece of software or device, to interact with it. This can include mobile devices, which we tend to think of as tools. Although this image is partially correct, it’s still missing a big piece of the puzzle. To continue the analogy, if the Internet is a cloud, then the mobile ecosystem would be the atmosphere, made up of many clouds, keeping the clouds from drifting off into space; the Internet is just one of these clouds, albeit a very large one.

In case that isn’t confusing enough, people in mobile tend to refer to _everything_ related to mobile as “mobile.” This chapter looks at some of the clouds in the sky and how each part plays into the ecosystem as a whole. It also looks at how you can get started with mobile.

Think of the mobile ecosystem instead as a system of layers, as shown in FIG 2-1. Each layer is reliant on the others to create a seamless, end-to-end experience. Although not every piece of the puzzle is included in every mobile product and service, for the majority of the time, they seem to add complexity to our work, regardless of whether we expressly put them there.

The following sections expand on each of these layers and the roles they play in the mobile ecosystem.