Opera, Microsoft, and the Mobile Browser Market

DrEspenA writes "Salon has an interesting article on the competition for the mobile phone browser market. Ostensibly the article is about Microsoft's efforts to dominate the market, but the key protagonist is really Opera Software, which may be gaining the (initial) upper hand simply because they are not Microsoft. Good discussion of whether standards and familiarity really is necessary in the mobile browser market."

Comments

Re:Open Source?

[Russellkhan]

Good call. Forgot about those.

Only thing is, I bet the cell phone providers and manufacturers are getting paid to make sure that we can start viewing web ads on these phones ASAP.

Or is that just my paranoia talking?

Re:Do we really want this?

[TummyX]

Well if you don't need it don't buy it. If there isn't a need for it, noone will buy it and they'll stop making it.

Personally, I'd want to be able to google anywhere, anytime. Imagine the largest human library in existance accessible from a device that sits in your pocket.

Talking about mobile browsers

[jki]

If you are like me and your mobile browser does not come with a highbandwidth access, you might benefit from this Openchallenge submission/implementation from yesterday (not originally crafted for openchallenge). I tried it, and will add it to my toolbox.

ziproxy is a forwarding (non-caching) proxy that gzips text and HTML files, and reduces the size of images by converting them to low quality JPEGs. It is intended to increase the speed for dial-up Internet connections. Most browsers support gzipped content, so Web pages appear as normal, but as they are only a fraction of their original page size, pages are much quicker to load. Even for browsers that don't support it, hints how to overcome it using SSH port forwarding are included. Images are reduced in size by an average of one third, with only marginal visible image quality loss. It should be used with inetd/xinetd, but if you can't use them, a simple replacement "netd" is provided.

UI Customization

[ensignyu]

The article has quite an emphasis on companies being able to customize the appearance of the software UI. I'm not a smartphone user, but I don't think the screen appearance has nearly as much glamour/show-off appeal as chic faceplates and such.

My opinion is that Opera's supposed smart "massaging," also mentioned in the article, will be hailed as easier to use than Microsoft's Pocket IE, and thus play a larger end-user role than vendor customizing.

Although, it is nice to see vendors say that the Windows UI is bland, ubiquitous, and doesn't possess the uniqueness that Nokia et al. want.

Business deals and positive/negative corporate assocations usually trump user comments and design staff, IMO, but not always.

Re:Mobile browsers?

[Cheese Cracker]

Dammit. Make the moille screens decent first.

You want to walk around with a clunky 15" screen? Well, not me. :) Mobile phones will not replace computers anytime soon for browsing the web, but the SSR (Small-Screen Rendering) is a step in the right direction. It will make it easier to browse websites in the mobile phone. No more need to scroll the screen sideways. Anyway, see the mobile browser as a complement rather than replacement for the real thing. :)

Small Screen Rendering in Opera Beta 7

[Hairy Goat]

Opera seems to be taking this market a little more seriously....

The latest beta (version 7) has the ability to render the screen as if viewed on a small screen (press shift-F11 to toggle the view)... This makes testing instantly easier.

I just love the opera browser (mouse gestures, tabbed browsing..etc) and have gladly payed for the privilage since opera 5, but thats just my choice..isn't that what this is about.

There is no way that IE has the market tied down at the moment because they don't control the platform that it sits on. This will be a much better test of browser preference than the artificial desktop browser choice, because MS don't control the platform (symbian platform that is)

Normal cellphones?

[jawtheshark]

Depends on where you live. I have a cellphone but I rarely use it to talk. Main usage is SMS (chicks love getting sweet SMS'es). Many people, mostly 12 to 25 years olds, exclusively use their cellphones for SMS. Talking? Yes, probably on fridaynight and saturdaynight to meet and it's SMS the rest of the time. So in a sense you could see SMS as Instant Messaging and thus like a classic PC application.
Also games are very popular on cells too. While I do not see the appeal, many seem to. I bought the most "business-like" phone I found, yet it still comes with 3 games. It's getting pretty hard to find "just a cellphone" without all the bloat. Try to find me a cellphone without Games, Calendar, Downloadable songs, on-screen animations, WAP, iMode or anything that doesn't belong on a cellphone. Only a contact list, talking function and SMS function... Find me such a beast and I'll agree there still are "just cellphones".

Besides, don't forget the Japanese. They surely seem to love iMode and they fancy cellphones.

Re:Do we really want this?

[AlecC]

I wouldn't read Slashdot on my phone, but I do use the Net exclusively for looking up train times, directory enquiries, checking if a plane I have to meet is delayed. I would like to do these from a mobile. The people I do them with already have classic web interfaces. It is extra work for them to do WAP, imode etc. Some will do the extra work, some won't. But I can access them all if I have standard HTML on my phone.

By the way, Opera7.0 beta (Windows only) can be put into small creen mode. It is worth downloading if you have got reasonable bandwidth. The browser works very well for plain-vanilla HTML that I have tried. Screws up a bit on javascript pop-up menus. This migh well be welcone pressure back to clean, simple web pages designed to give you information instead of high-energy jazzy pages intended to impress you with the provider and his web designer without telling you anything.