The Mobile Web Tablet

It’s a classic underdog story. When a couple of engineers at web browser maker Opera suggested to management that they should try building a mobile java version of their browser, no one listened. Well, they built it and it’s about to outgrow its desktop bigger brother. Here are some stats for browser market share:

(source)

Another way of putting the stats:

• Opera Mini: massive growth.
• Opera: no growth.

In a couple of months time, Opera Mini might very well pass its bigger brother and place itself amongst the top 4 browsers on the net (including desktop browsers).

Amazing! Really.

Compare this to other mobile (and pre-installed) browsers such as Access Netfront with a 0.01% market share according to the same statistics and it becomes even more amazing.

Now, “0.39%” of web traffic might not sound too impressive to you, but if you ever have tried building an application for mass market mobile phones you know that it’s a huge effort even getting it to work on the devices out there.

Then you have to convince people to download and install it. If you’re lucky, the settings for internet access are correct in their phones. If you’re even more lucky, they manage to find the application in the menu system after it’s been downloaded and installed.

And, remember, the users already have a browser pre-installed on their phones. It’s a native application and supposed to be faster and better integrated to the device. Your browser can’t be equally good to the native browser, it has to be much better otherwise people don’t bother downloading it.

Then there’s the whole mobile browsing business, which hasn’t really taken off the way once predicted. First and foremost you have to convince people of the very idea that a web browser in your phone actually can be usable.

Well, Opera pulled it off.

Looking at the statistics, it seems like Opera Mini right now is the engine pulling the entire mobile web up to the domains of the desktop world.

Look at the September stats:

Microsoft Internet Explorer 77.86%
Firefox 14.88%
Safari 5.07%
Opera 0.87%
Netscape 0.72%
Opera Mini 0.39%

There’s not a mobile browser in sight, except for Mini (disclaimer: I don’t know the percentage of iPhone users in the Safari stats). The competitors are down at 0.01%-0.02%. If Minis growth continues, it will hit 1% within 6-9 months and become the number 4 browser.

There’s only one conclusion to draw: right now the mobile web is Opera Mini and Opera Mini is the mobile web.

Sorry, Russell, but that’s a fact.

Opera Mini is becoming so big it soon makes sense to develop web sites and applications targeted towards Mini as a platform. In fact, if you plan to take your web site mobile (and of course you plan to do that, you’d be crazy not to), Opera Mini is the platform to use to do that. As a bonus, it will work on the iPhone too.

Now, if only Opera could follow Apple and open up the browser for access to the phone hardware and underlying OS (via the J2ME APIs), that would make one heck of a platform for mobile development. (I’ve actually suggested this to Opera a couple of times, but the message doesn’t seem to have sunk in. Oh well, the last time was pre-iPhone so maybe they’re starting to get it now. JSR290 is the Java standardization attempt of basically the same thing. )

Interesting times to work with the mobile web. Maybe 2008 will be the year it really takes off. If it does, it will be much thanks to Opera Mini. Who said mobile java is just good for games?

Popularity: 5% [?]

I can’t help but smile when I read about TeliaSoneras “ace up their sleeve” in the fight for becoming the operator to sell the iPhone in Sweden. Imagine that: operators fighting over who should sell a phone!

Touch screen, nice GUI and a slick design: those are not the true innovations in the iPhone. The fact that it’s the manufacturer picking what operator will be allowed to sell their products. Now, that’s new.

Popularity: 3% [?]

The pieces of the Google Phone, gphone, puzzle is coming together. After acquiring Voice 2.0 company GrandCentral a couple of months ago they now extend to microblogging and presence with the acquisition of Jaiku (similar to Twitter but more mobile oriented).

I’ve said it a before: good mobile 2.0 services requires good web services in the back. Well, Google is building one heck of a backbone of services to complement their upcoming phones (or phone OS). Interesting to see what they come up with in the end.

Anyway, congratulations to Jyri and the rest of the Jaiku team!

Updated: Techcrunch UK has more.

Tim O’Reilly has a good overview of Jaiku here. This sentence sums up why this is related to the GPhone:

This is the way a phone address book ought to work. I continue to think that the address book is one of the great untapped Web 2.0 opportunities, and that the phone, even more than email and IM, and certainly more than an outside-in, invitation-driven “social networking application” represents my real social network.

My own company, GlocalReach, will solve a slightly different problem in another circle of intimacy but the address book in the phone is definitely one of the untapped goldmines of social networking. The established manufacturers are fumbling with more or less closed and slow moving solutions like Wireless Village that no one uses.

Jaiku was founded in February 2006 and Twitter the month after. Wireless Village has been in standardization groups for years. Google, on the other hand, is an acquisition machine not wasting time eating salmon sandwiches in standardization meetings (believe me, I’ve been to them) but in stead letting innovation happen outside the company and pick the right time to devour integrate it.

I bet there are at least five times as many people working with acquisitions than with standardization at Google. I also bet there are fifty times as many people working with standardization than acquisitions at companies like Nokia, Sony Ericsson or Motorola.

Should they change? I don’t know. The telecom way of standardizing everything is not a winning strategy if you want to be innovative. It might be good for a lot of other stuff, like building huge wireless networks or come up with platforms that other can innovate on, but not for innovation.

It boils down to the question: what kind of company do you want to be? The innovative kind or the standardizing kind? The application or the platform? If you’re a successful application, you’re going to end up becoming the platform anyway so I’d say the choice is easy. Just ask Microsoft.

Popularity: 5% [?]