AOL, once an immensely powerful online commodity that is now forced to scrape by to keep its name, has launched a brand new mobile app that, curiously, is initally only available to Android.
It is part of an expansion to the mobile world that AOL has sorely needed for years. With the app, users can easily navigate through some of AOL’s biggest properties such as Engadget news, Mapquest maps, and AOL e-mail accounts.
For everyone else, AOL has launched a new mobile website. Believe it or not, until now, m.aol.com was still running on Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) technology. That’s the kind of structure that was common in the days of tiny cell phone screens when only about 1% of people even knew they could connect their phones to the Internet.
The new mobile site has support for HTML5 and makes it much easier and seamless to get access from all that AOL has to offer. Even though the dedicated app is going to Android first, the mobile website is more tailored to the iPhone, says PC World.
It is a curious move to offer the app to Android first. Google’s operating system has become notorious for being the very last platform to get high-profile apps, with very few exceptions. Things like Amazon’s Kindle app took months to get on Android after first appearing on the iPhone App Store.
The AOL app will be eventually transferred over to other platforms including Blackberry and the iPhone.
