I can see a need for mobile theme, sure. Not for the bandwidth, but to work well on the miniature screen. Sure, my Nexus1 is bigger than my previous phone, but it is still really small. I can see removing things such as shoutbox or even most of the islands form a mobile skin at minimum, but even some of the nav elements could go. My stuff could be cut in half, for example.

No, I don't see it as reducing the need. I do everything on my mobile. As it is, many of our users (and we only have a few hundred) access from iPhone and Blackberry.

Your analysis completely ignores users placing their mobile device on a wifi network.

Cool. I just had a user email me about this today.

I just got a iPhone 4 and would love to have a theme for our site. More and more of are users are asking for one...

SD, I'm assuming you haven't had any free time yet, but I'm still looking forward to your solution. Have you gotten anywhere with it?

I just started noticing this in use on some of the forums I frequent that are using vBulletin.

i've had some time and have written 50% of the code, but got involved elsewhere and the project has languished for a bit.

when i get back to it, the code skeleton just needs some skin on it and i might then need a couple beta sites as test.

Let me know if you need help testing it SD

SD, you know my group is always game to try to break things for you. I mean test things..

In Europe and here in the UK mobile use is huge, and the market place for pushing apps and traditional sites onto the mobile platform is serious business.

I for one would welcome the ability to have a usable theme for UBB on my iPhone (other mobile platforms are available :))

I find trying to access my site via mobile to be clunky at best; and being on the move a lot there is a regular need to be able to do this for moderation / post approval needs. I can't always rely on my nominated Mods being available to do these tasks for me.

I dont think data use/bandwidth issues enter into it over here. Most providers include an allocation for data use now, even if several providers have had to "re-word" their fair-usage terms.

Just my two-penneth worth to chip into the discussion