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I expect this year to be an exciting one for mobile browsing and mobile web apps.\u00a0 Here are my predictions of what 2010 will bring to mobile web sites, services and browsers.<\/p>\n
There will be major improvements in smartphone mobile browser technology .<\/strong> Mozilla, Opera, Nokia, Skyfire, Google and RIM will compete to deliver a near desktop experience on high end devices. Expect to see better and faster JavaScript engines and increased support for HTML 5’s offline storage, geolocation, SVG and video features.\u00a0 Desktop level Adobe Flash support will also appear on most smartphone platforms, although probably not on\u00a0 the iPhone.<\/p>\n
Full-Web browsers will become the norm for feature phones<\/strong>. Feature phones have traditionally used WAP2 browsers that can only handle made for mobile pages less than about 20KB in size, Full-Web browsers can handle at least 500KB pages and can load desktop sites as long as they don’t require Flash or advanced JavaScript support.\u00a0 Opera Mini, Bolt and UC will push the boundaries of proxy based browsing to add desktop\/smartphone\u00a0 features like tabbed browsing, copy\/paste,\u00a0 bookmarklets and streaming video to many feature phones.\u00a0 Javascript performance of proxy based browsers will improve but will continue to be a weak point.\u00a0 Manufacturers and operators will increasingly specify proxy based full-web browsers or the embedded full-web direct browsers from Opera, Nokia (S40 Webkit), Netfront and Teleca on mid-range phones. The ancient Openwave and Nokia WAP browsers will be relegated to only the most basic phones.<\/p>\n
“Middle-Web” sites will proliferate<\/strong>. These are what used to be called “iPhone Web Apps”\u00a0 They render as a single column like traditional mobile sites but with larger page sizes, more and larger images and judicious use of JavaScript for asynchronous partial page updates and eye candy like rollover effects.\u00a0 Some Middle-Web sites only support Webkit based touch browsers (iPhone, WebOS and Android) but the better ones will use graceful degradation and progressive enhancement<\/a> to support the less capable\u00a0 full-web browsers of feature phones.<\/p>\n
Traditional mobile web sites will start to disappear – prematurely. <\/strong>With interest and development effort centered around the middle-web, publishers and developers will tend to neglect their legacy mobile sites. This will be a mistake. Even though the handset replacement cycle averages 18 moths in the US and Europe, old phones live on for five years or more in the developing world. Case in point, according to AdMob<\/a> (PDF), the most popular handsets in Indonesia are the\u00a0 Nokia N70 and 6600\u00a0 which are\u00a0 five and seven years old. Developing markets are also where mobile traffic is growing the fastest; according to Opera<\/a> betwen Nov 2008 and Nov 2009 Opera Mini page views\u00a0 increased by\u00a0 604.5% in Indonesia, 445.3% in South Africa and 1091.1% in Vietnam.\u00a0 Those increases are on top very significant traffic volume as the three countries are in the top ten in the world in overall Opera Mini traffic.<\/p>\n
The mobile web will look more and more like the desktop web.<\/strong> Publishers, developers and advertisers are waking\u00a0 up to the fact that more people are now browsing with phones than with PCs!<\/a> Things that are taken for granted in the desktop web like SEO, thematic consistency and big name, big dollar ad campaigns will increasingly come to the mobile web.<\/p>\n
Less impacted networks will see the rising demand for data an opportunity for growth.<\/strong> Expect to see some innovative low cost and data offerings from operators who still have surplus data capacity.\u00a0 These will tend to be through MVNO’s so that they don’t cannibalize revenue from current customers locked into higher cost plans by contracts.\u00a0 A couple of examples have already appeared;\u00a0 MVNO StraightTalk<\/a>‘s $45\/month unlimited voice, messaging and data plan on the Verizon 3G network\u00a0 and a $40\/month unlimited data-only offering\u00a0 from DataJack<\/a>, a MVNO using T-Mobile USA”s 3G network. There is some doubt about DataJack’s legitimacy<\/a>, but StraightTalk is real,\u00a0 owned by Am\u00e9rica M\u00f3vil<\/a>, the 4th largest mobile operator in the world, and sold by WalMart, the nation’s largest retailer.<\/p>\n
Maemo is not normob<\/a> ready yet\u00a0 but will be widely embraced by the tech savvy. With almost no current market share it can only go up.<\/p>\n
Photo by Optical Illusion. cc Some rights reserved. I expect this year to be an exciting one for mobile browsing and mobile web apps.\u00a0 Here are my predictions of what 2010 will bring to mobile web sites, services and browsers. There will be major improvements in smartphone mobile browser technology . Mozilla, Opera, Nokia, Skyfire, Google and RIM will compete to deliver a near desktop experience on high end devices. Expect to see better and faster JavaScript engines and increased … Continue reading