Facebook announced its participation in several industry-wide initiatives to advance the mobile web, Brett Taylor, the company’s CEO, said during a live keynote at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this morning.
“Despite the incredible amount of work we have to do to make the mobile web great, I am extremely optimistic. In all of my years in the industry, I haven’t seen such a coordinated effort across so many segments of our industry,” Taylor said. “These are hard problems, but they are solvable problems, and we are going to solve them together.”
Facebook will collaborate with more than 30 device manufacturers, operators and developers to promote HTML5 as a way to address ongoing fragmentation across the mobile industry. Partners include major firms such as Samsung, Sony, Nokia and AT&T.
HTML5 is gaining widespread interest among developers because it enables web-based applications to run directly in smartphone browsers. That means apps can be deployed across platforms like Android and iOS without having to adapt to each app store and its specific requirements.
Taylor also described current mobile web payment flows as “broken.” Even when operator billing is available, many implementations rely on SMS-based device verification that interrupts the normal user experience and forces developers to integrate with dozens or even hundreds of different operator APIs to reach a global audience.
To address this, Facebook announced a partnership with operators worldwide to improve both the user and developer experience of operator billing. The initiative aims to eliminate the need for SMS verification for the vast majority of customers and to provide developers with a single software development kit (SDK) that makes global operator billing reach much simpler, relying on minimal technical verification.
By working with device manufacturers, carriers and the developer community, Facebook hopes to reduce fragmentation, streamline payments, and help the mobile web deliver a smoother, more consistent experience for users and creators alike.