Opera, Microsoft, and the Mobile Browser Market 245
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."
Mobile browsers? (Score:3, Insightful)
why no choice? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:why no choice? (Score:3, Insightful)
At any rate, there needs to be that default browser or else nobody will want to buy it because it is too hard (perceptions count here) for people to set up if they have to select what they want. Why? Because they simply don't know what they want.
Do we really want this? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have no desire to read Slashdot through my phone thanks. I need a decent screen. I may want occasional bits and pieces of information, but this will be very short pieces of info like news headlines. Internet cellphones simply try to do far too much, and be far too much like a desktop PC.
Not just anti-Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Give me speed first! (Score:5, Insightful)
A smartphone needs familiarity, A cellphone not! (Score:5, Insightful)
More of a design issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad Reasoning... (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Probably... (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Re:Mobile browsers? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Give me speed first! (Score:3, Insightful)
... why would i need a browser when gprs is so expensive and slow?
Don't put the cart before the horse! Until there is widespread need for the speed there is no encouragement to the networks to invest in their infrasturcture. Take the internet as an example - its been slow and crap for year, but now the plebs want streaming movies broadband is breaking out all over the place...This reminds me, (Score:3, Insightful)
In essence, that's where Opera stands as they have a lot of potential to be a dominating web-browsing force on the cellphone platform -- If they play their cards right.
A line from the article struck me odd.
"Microsoft's browser will work only on phones powered by Microsoft's cellphone operating system"
This shouldn't be surprising but just *read* that sentance. A cellphone operating system? At least to the laymen like myself, it seems kind of outlandish. But it also gives a clue to what microsoft is aiming for. It's not enough that they want to to be #1 and the only provider of a celphone broswer. That's understandable, just like Opera's motives. But to SHOVE a whole MS operating system in there in the process only reeks of shit that you've all heard before.
A phone, like a pair of shoes or a car, and unlike a PC or a coffeemaker, is a personal device, a fashion accessory that says something about its owner.
Yeah, it says "Hey! look at me with my default and super annoying ringtone that everyone hates so much. I'd love to talk but I gotta kick some ass in this fighting game that's causing my vision to blur, which makes it hard when i'm driving while talking on my cellphone..Ow, and this tumor on my head is really itchy, God and the buttons are so...*CLICK*
(I happen to be an owner of a cellphone
Re:why no choice? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bad Reasoning... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a consumer argument. System sellers, i.e. the phone manufacturers, have seen what happened to IBM when they made the mistake of allowing MS to control the "user experience" and they don't want it to happen to them.
As it happens, Opera is a very good browser anyway. If it was open source it would get more support and would develop faster.
TWW
Re:Bad Reasoning... (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, if you'd read the article, you'd have seen that the advantage Opera has in not being a MS product is that the MS browser will only run on a phone that has an MS operating system - and not many cell phone manufacturers are interested in going for that option at this point.
Why exactly does Opera deserve more attention than Mozilla? Having only one ding against it doesn't make it better unless you're saying that Mozilla has more dings against it. And the way I see it, Mozilla has several advantages over Opera:
Re:Not just anti-Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't think it might be because Opera's browser is more suited to mobiles because it's less bloated?
No, I think that "not Microsoft" is a very strong reason for Ericcson, Nokia, etc. to use Opera, even if the Microsoft solution was better.
As we all know, Microsoft has been very successful in the PC world. They bascially dictate to the PC manufacturers what to do to a huge extent - not just technically, but from a marketing perspective too. If, for instance, Dell wanted to sell a Harry Potter themed PC, Microsoft can say no (and have done). Do you think the mobile phone companies want to be in that situation? Do you think they want their products to become commodities with cut-throat margins upon which Microsoft add software with huge margins and upon which they can dictate the price?
I'm not saying this because I am an anti-Microsoft zealot, but because I can really see the business sense of the mobile phone companies not having anything to do with Microsoft. This is one of the biggest problems Microsoft currently faces - the market is moving away from PCs to smaller form devices, and the manufacturers don't want anything to do with Microsoft. This is why we will see Microsoft increasingly experimenting with it's own hardware, like the X-Box. Don't be suprised if you find a Microsoft branded mobile phone released sometime in the next couple of years.
fastest ever (Score:2, Insightful)
Mozilla is not perfect (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Do we really want this? (Score:2, Insightful)
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, President, Digital Equipment, 1977
Today, people are convinced that they need a computer (or more) in their home. You might not want this, but there are companies out there that would like this (a new market) and will try to create a "need" (new revenue stream).
Re:Not just anti-Microsoft (Score:2, Insightful)
I know that since the Microsoft courtcase everybody - both anti and pro MS people - have portraied Microsoft as an huge amassement of (evil or good) geniuses.
But let's face it: They are incompetent.
Microsoft is like some communistic state buerocracy. When the money keeps flowing in and nobodys job is at stake, there is not much incentive to work hard.
Of course Microsoft, the 40000 man company needs 10 times as long to fix a security bug than a 20-man company. Of course every project Microsoft that was started after the 80's and early 90's (like keyboards, mice, WinCE, MSN, MS Bob, Internet Explorer, PenWindows, Windows on non-x86, Hailstorm, XBox, etc.) was making big losses. Of course they did not innovate anything really new and instead just ripped off concepts from somewhere else (first the basic windowing system from Apple, now more advanced concepts like multiple desktops from the Unix GUI. Also the much-hyped tablet PC is nothing new and already existed and failed in the early 90's)
Microsoft is very powerful and rich. But they also became lazy, incompetent and slow. Everywhere, where Microsoft can't use their desktop domination to push a product, it is doomed to fail. - Simply because Microsoft is too slow and too expensive to create a competitive product that can survive on it's own. (Just look at XBox. It came out 2 years after Playstation2 (= too late), it features a short-term low numbers design for a long-term, mass produced project (off-the-shelf design where a custom design would fit best =stupid design), they are pumping about 200 million per quarter into it, and it still has fallen behind PS2 and Gamecube. Unlike Sony and Nintendo who have higher development costs and will sell so-and-so many units to break-even, Microosft will never break even. The more the sell, the deeper they get into the red. There is no hope for XBox, Microsoft may keep it alive for a few years until it's livetime is over, but XBox, the platform is doomed and there will be no XBox2. There is no way they can put out a product competing with PS3 at the sime time. First, because they already have choosen a stupid design and second because they are not very competent, especially in the gaming market.)
Re:Not just anti-Microsoft (Score:2, Insightful)
Also thought Von Tetzchner has a point with phones being about personal expression and style.
Software and data standards (Score:2, Insightful)
I owned an Ericsson T68i. I selected that phone because I wanted all the connectivity that it offered. I also picked it because I previously owned an Ericsson SH888 and it was well built and easy to use. The other factor that kept me with Ericsson was the availability of information regarding their products. The SH888 came with the reference manual (which included the AT command set) on the CD with the phone together with a data lead and synchronisation software. Similar data for the T68i is available on their web site.
As a Linux fan I want access to the data formats and protocols that my hardware uses. All these are available for my 'phone. It runs Symbian's OS but I don't really care about that. I just care that its usable. If Microsoft come along and corner the market what will happen. Will they come up with their own munged non standard protocols and data formats. Will they force me to use only Windows when transfering data to and from my phone. I really don't want that to happen.
Re:why no choice? (Score:5, Insightful)
Storage isn't a problem.
Re:Not just anti-Microsoft (Score:2, Insightful)
Or maybe not. My take is that ``Opera is suitable for handheld devices'' is the real argument, and ``Opera is not MicroSoft'' is mainly used to sell the story on
Re:Mozilla is not perfect (Score:2, Insightful)
Galeon 1.2.6 RH RPM: 2792KB + Mozilla 12,700KB
Phoenix 0.4 WIN32: 7224KB
Mozilla WIN32 Nightly (ZIP): 11,341KB
Dillo: 300KB however its not even close to a complete browser
separate mobile phones from mobile PDAs (Score:1, Insightful)
The openwave mobile browser has at least 70% of the global handset browser market - and growing.
This is because Openwave is able to focus on this type of browser.
Neither Microsoft or Opera is going to be able to trump this anytime soon. Microsoft is only a threat to the mobile PDA market. Opera is nowhere. Who is shipping with their browser?