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Big scope for small-screen web developers in mainland

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For developers wanting to make a living creating websites for PDAs and mobile phones, Hong Kong is not a good place to be, according to industry experts. The place to be is the mainland.

A few years ago, Hong Kong was caught up in the wireless application protocol (WAP) excitement that had nearly everybody looking to create webpages that could run on the protocol.

Dwayne Serjeant, an independent designer in Hong Kong, has worked for major web development companies and has been involved in the business from the beginning. He is sceptical about designing specifically for the small screen in Hong Kong.

'The biggest problem with small screens - and by that I mean PDAs as well as mobile phones - is the user experience is simply not compelling, particularly if you are accustomed to using a notebook computer.

'I tried doing a search on Yahoo! with my WAP-enabled phone a few years ago and Yahoo Search took up two lines of the small screen. Add to that the less than lightning-fast response time and you have a lot of frustrated users.

'This surely must have something to do with the fact that you no longer hear much about WAP.'

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