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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."
Why can't I choose what browser I'd like to use?
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
..If for nothing other than the fact they have a huge ad below this story =D.
Got Lynx?
What about Links?
SteveB.
... why would i need a browser when gprs is so expensive and slow?
"Do something man. Right now."
It's probably difficult for Microsoft to rule the mobile-marked because they can't seem to find a cellphone with 256 MB of DDR-RAM and a 1 GHz CPU. Not to mention a physical-media like a harddrive for swapping when you are dialing long-distance numbers.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
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?
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
Personally I always found browsing on WinCE mobile PCs to be complicated by the fact that the browser itself likes to take up a good 35% of the screen space. Packing features in is great guys, but the first browser to give a sense of utility without making me feel like I'm browsing the net through a keyhole is the one that gets my money.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
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.
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.
Am I the only one that thought that this wasn't particulary unque? Hell, Lynx has been doing it with text for ages and AvantGo (with "display tables" turned off) does exactly the same thing.
Whilst the Opera guy may think that the browser war is hotting up (he's wrong, MS have won, everything else is relegated to the niche position and always will be - there are far too many Joe Blow users out there), they are definately onto a winner in the mobile arena.
Oh finally, for those that don't know, Sendo are not a well known manufacturer of mobile phones here in the UK. The reason being is that they don't sell under their own brand. Their business model is to create cheap network operator branded phones and for that, they do pretty well.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
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.
Dammit. Make the moille screens decent first.
:) 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. :)
You want to walk around with a clunky 15" screen? Well, not me.
``Good discussion of whether standards and familiarity really is necessary in the mobile browser market.''
What standards? Do you mean the de-facto standard for desktop computers (MicroSoft), or the vendor-independent web standards, which Opera has traditionally supported like no other?
---
``The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from; furthermore, if you do not like any of them, you can just wait for next year's model.''
-- Andrew S. Tannenbaum
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
"...which may be gaining the (initial) upper hand simply because they are not Microsoft. "
/. Community, but the reality is that the vast majority of people either really don't care. Outside of Slashot, the real world isn't exactly vindictive against MS. Not everybody's running around being masochistic just for the sake not using MS stuff. "I spent 3 weeks making my Linux box do whatever my Windows box was already doing!" Whatever.
/. than Mozilla as an MS browser alternative. Zealousy abounds I guess. I say that because the only ding I can see against Opera is that it's Ad-supported. I'd care except they show cartoons in that banner window. Heh.
Err right. That might be true in the
The reason that Opera could be gaining ground is that they made a good product. That's it. Even in the mobile market. I got a chance to use a Zaurus running Opera, and found it to be a rather pleasant experience. It definitely kicked IE on PocketPC's butt.
However, I'm not exactly picketing Opera to make a PocketPC version. Why? I don't browse the web on my PocketPC. It's a horrible experience. Not because IE is bad (although it is, at least for browsing the web) but because the PDA doesn't give you the resolution and speed you need. It works great with Avantgo, though. No complaints there. With AvantGo, the pages are formatted to PocketPC. As long as I have AvantGo (even works wirelessly), then I don't care if it's Opera or IE, or even Mozilla.
Opera doesn't have a whole lot of chance of gaining ground until PDAs become capable of viewing entire web pages. I don't think that tech is very far away. LCD technology has gotten a lot better in the DPI realm. It won't be more than a year or two before those tiny devices can run at 480 by 640. When that happens, Opera suddenly becomes an interesting alternative.
It's a pity, really. I think Opera deserves more attention on
"Derp de derp."
[i]Can phone makers, and a little Norwegian company called Opera, stop the onslaught?[/i]
My experience with Scandanavian companies is that they like to stick together. They would much rather deal with someone close by or at least in the European Region.
This gives Opera another leg up, as Nokia and Ericson are in the same region.
Jason
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)
Actually I would suggest a different approach: make websites decent. For goodness's sake, it's not like mobile phone displays can't display text, and isn't that what hyperTEXT is all about? It's not the fault of hardware manufacturers that designers chose to assume that people have a certain screen size. If they hard-code the width of their pages as 800 pixels and their pages read like crap for someone who has less than that, it's the designers' fault, not anyone else's. It's a decission to make, and both ways have their merits and shortcomings.
Having said that, I don't think most mobile phones are good for web surfing. Reading short messages is ok, but massive amounts of text just do require painful amounts of scrolling on such a small display. Since I like to type, too, I'd rather go for a handheld like those Psion organizers, that have a landscape-oriented display with a fairly decent keyboard under it. If only their hardware wasn't incompatible with everyone else's (save for the styli and batteries) I would buy one (well, money is a concern, too). But that's not a phone, I know.
Anyway, more power to Opera. They've always delivered a great product, and although there seems to be a strong resistance to closed software from the hackers side, and a strong resistance against anything non-MicroSoft on the non-hacker side, I sincerely hope Opera doesn't go the way BeOS did, but either flourishes commercially or goes open-source before the bell tolls for them.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
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.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Imagine the largest human library in existance accessible from a device that sits in your pocket.
Just so long as it has in large friendly letters "Don't Panic" on the cover.
On Sendo's leaving Microsoft and using Symbian, where they get the source and are allowed to tweak with it:
Was it a technology problem -- did Microsoft's software work? "It was a not a technology issue," she said. "I cannot go into all the details about it, but our business model is to offer very customized phones so they have something to distinguish themselves in the marketplace, which we cannot offer if we don't have the source code."
Microsoft dismissed this explanation. In an e-mail, Suwanjindar said that Microsoft's "shared source" model "provides partners with the APIs [application programming interfaces] they need in order to customize and develop applications for our platform."
Sendo: We don't like your deal, it isn't flexible enough.
Microsoft: We'll give you our API's.
Sendo: API's aren't as flexible as the full source code.
Microsoft (handwaving): API's will do.
Sendo: No, they won't.
Microsoft (handwaving again): APIs will do.
Sendo: No, they won't! You think you're some kind of jedi, waving your hand like that?
Too late. It's on the market since about a week in selected European countries.
The phone is manufactured for Microsoft and sold exclusively through a deal with Orange.
If it is a success, now that's a whole different question. I guess people prefer not having to reboot their phones.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Yes, I do work in embedded systems. Microsoft has already lost that market. On PDAs, they are still holding out pretty well, but in the long term I see them losing that, too.
Please do not blame Opera for not being open source. I remember I was using Opera in 1998, it was fast, it was small, it was usable. MSIE was always huge, slow, and bloated. But, Netscape wasn't much better. Now, after 4 years, there is free browser - Mozilla. I use it every day. But it's far from perfect. In 3-4 years they added irc client, mail/news stuff, and who knows what else. They completly forgot about speed. MSIE was huge? Compare 1998 MSIE with todays Mozilla.
I am not using Opera, because I have strong computer and I can waste resources for such product like Mozilla. But there are places when Mozilla is not a right thing.
Try http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2Fsearch-bool.ht ml&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=Microsoft&FIELD1=ASNM&co1=AN D&TERM2=browser&FIELD2=&d=pall
So what they don't get by technology, they might try to force by litigation, particularly if software patents would be officialised in Europe.
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.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.