Telephia released some very interesting research numbers on mobile web browsing in USA (both on feature phones and smartphones). Openwave (free simulator) leads with 27% and together with Motorola they make over 50% of the US mobile browsing market. Apparently, Americans mostly care about Mail, Weather and Sports when it comes to mobile browsing. Opera Mini is pretty popular lately, but it seems that Telephia only counted the pre-installed browsers in their survey. When we are talking worldwide numbers and only about smartphones though, Nokia’s S60/80/90 phones are beating everyone else with over 64% of the smartphone worldwide market share (please note though that smartphones make up only about ~10% of the overall phone market but their numbers are growing fast).
Running the Market Share Numbers on Mobile Web Browsing
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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… is pretty useless, given the limited bandwidth and screen real estate on your typical mobile phone, IMHO. It’s a completely frustrating experience. Sure, it may be useful if you have no other choice, but I avoid it like the plague.
I urge you to try http://www.OSAlert.com with your phone. It is extremely usable, autodetects your mobile browser, it is fast to load (28 KB or 2 KB, depending on the browser we autodetect) and it incorporates 95% of the features found on the desktop version.
And then there is Mobileplay: http://mini.mobileplay.com/
Paper is still the best mobile technology available. It does’t matter what you do, it is not enjoyable to read anything of any length on a screen the size of my thumbnail. The only way mobile devices will become usable is when they become larger not smaller.
At the present state of things, the steno notebook I use to take notes is infinitely more useful than any pda could ever be. It needs zero power; it weighs about an ounce or two; it doesn’t break even if I fold it in two or sit on it. No, I can’t get the latest irrelevent news about football, nor do I care.
“They’re mostly worthless junk, discardable toys for adults. All the techno-toy fetists in the audience, who chase after every Latest Cool Gizmo, may think otherwise, but yet with their destructive locust-like behaviour prove the point.” — tuomov
We are talking about BROWSING here, not note-taking. A paper doesn’t update itself with sports or web news. And if you have a QVGA phone, and the web site you are browsing has a good mobile version, then QVGA is more than enough to have a pleasurable experience.
Edited 2006-08-17 21:47
I believe I addressed that (the static nature of paper). The point is that if I wanted to read something on the go, I would rather print it out before hand than attempt to use my inept phone.
There’s no way around the issue, the display area and robustness needs to come up, while the thickness and power consumption needs to come down. It needs to become more like paper.
Edited 2006-08-17 22:00
The problem I get is that it detects my nokia 770 as a cellphone it seems. So everything is cut down which is frustrating considering the full site is a lot nicer and will work fine on the 770. This is on the normal site By the way.
Edited 2006-08-18 08:36
That is on purpose.
i’m posting from my xv6700 pda phone right now. thanks for making the site accesible to small screens
Browser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows CE; PPC; 240×320)
im posting this from my treo600. browsing on it is plenty usable and works well for me. I use it daily for loads of browsing. its also plenty fast. I use my phone for everything. playing mp3s. watching for length divx movies while on a trip etc. its all personal prefernce.
Browser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 95; PalmSource; Blazer 3.0) 16;160×160
How do you post your browser user agent string?
We detect if it’s a mobile browser and if yes, we post it.