I’ve always believed that top-level domains should be too cheap to meter. We should set up as many as we can, in order to get rid of the artificial scarcity that surrounds domain names in general. But that doesn’t mean we need a “.mobi” domain for mobile device websites right now.
As long as we pretend that TLD’s represent something special, we should treat them like they mean something. And I have no idea what .mobi means.
The idea that a “mobile” device for accessing the Internet is different from a “nonmobile” device will seem charmingly naive before we decide how to use this new TLD. The idea that a single domain could say something useful about the capabilities of the device and protocols accessing it was never charming.
Perhaps it could serve a similar purpose to the “.xxx” TLD — a good place to avoid while we’re gobbling up well-designed conventional websites and RSS feeds on the road.