For many of us, mobile devices have already overtaken PCs as primary tools for work, play, and communication. This is possible in part because today’s mobiles offer more processing power, connectivity, and capability than the PCs of even a few years ago. It’s also in part because a wide range of independently developed mobile applications and widgets has sprung up to put all that power to work in creative ways.

With new app stores launching for every carrier and operating system, each featuring ever-more-inventive widgets, the mobile application boom continues to deliver new capabilities for consumers and new revenue streams for operators—and it’s showing no sign of slowing down. Yet this brings us to the problem.

While one widget is good and two widgets are better, a phone full of widgets represents a serious design challenge for software developers, handset manufacturers, and mobile carriers alike. With more and more widgets demanding access to the same limited pool of handset resources, something always has to give. Often, it’s the user experience.

What’s Not Working

Developers, manufacturers, and carriers are now obliged to choose between several inadequate approaches to balancing handset performance and widget utility. Overall handset performance can be protected by severely limiting widget capabilities, as Apple has done with the first few generations of iPhone, where background operation is strictly forbidden.

Alternatively, widgets can be allowed to run free, delivering a world of capability at the expense of battery life, predictable handset operation, and user experience as they churn away in the background and struggle with each other for right-of-way every time they need to connect to the Internet.

A compromise approach has been to create an integrated user interface for each service by either pre-loading a custom client or making it available for download. This strategy, while initially successful for specific services, has become untenable as the sheer breadth of widget-engine-driven applications overwhelms device resources.

All of these approaches fall flat in treating the handset as a closed system. Think of the handset as a house full of useful appliances but only one electrical outlet. Turn on the cable box, and the TV goes dark. Turn the TV back on, and the dryer stops spinning. What’s needed here isn’t a better set of rules for access to the outlet or a faster switching algorithm. What’s needed is a power strip.

One Socket, One Client, Many Services

Fortunately, such a power strip already exists. It’s called iSkoot. Just as a single power outlet can deliver enough power for multiple appliances if they can all connect, a single open socket can deliver enough real-time connectivity for multiple widgets by concentrating service logic in the cloud and using a single, light client to give them the guidance and structure they need to play well together.

The client operates as the management layer between the mobile handset and the server node. It would open a persistent connection to the application server to listen for updates from a subscriber’s various services. The client would deliver service immediacy and data efficiency by buffering non-time-critical information and delivering a batch upon receiving an important notification. Notification alerts give the user the experience of instantaneous service even over a 2.5G connection.

With a persistent connection to Web services, the device itself isn’t pinging services or requesting updates. The processing is done in the “cloud,” which then pushes updates to the devices via the open connection. With the processing in the cloud, the new client could allow a low-specification device to support advanced services from a single client. And because the heavy lifting is done in the Internet, users won’t need expensive data plans.

The widget-managing client would reside on the server platform as a device interface manager and on the handset as a sub-layer on the client, managing interaction with the platform on the one side and device resources and user interface rendering on the other. This approach offers the operator maximum strategic flexibility, supporting a saturation strategy with rapid porting to all prevalent device platforms, an exclusive hero device with deep stack integration, and an open user-interface design supported by a software development kit.

Meanwhile, manufacturers won’t have to invest in new operating-system platforms, perform any deep technology integration, or upgrade any hardware. Instead, they only need to integrate the new client software into their devices. This solution allows manufacturers to add real-time Internet connectivity and data-rich applications to even entry-level mobile devices.

Handsets with build-and-materials costs as low as $60 or less would be able to connect to multiple Internet services and data sources simultaneously, offering an experience previously restricted to more expensive, high-end devices purpose-built for Internet connection and data-rich applications, dramatically expanding the markets for new handsets, new widgets, and new data plans.

One Widget To Rule Them All?

A new client technology that would offload processing to the cloud and manage widget interactions would enable any phone to support Web services. The client would also provide traffic control and shared intelligence for the diverse mobile widgets currently competing for handset resources, bandwidth, and network capacity.

The benefit of aggregating all the user’s services in the network and delivering to a single client cannot be overemphasized. An optimized connection reduces data overhead and cost. A single client, instead of multiple clients customized for each application, frees up sockets and extends battery life. Most importantly, it reduces handset specifications, thereby opening new widget-inspired services to the mass market.