Forecast: 1.7 Billion Mobile Web Users by 2013

Posted: Thursday, June 26, 2008
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Author: pradhana
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Filed under: Market Survey, Mobile Web Browser

By Jason Ankeny

The emergence of collaborative Web 2.0 applications including social networking, user-generated content, location-based services and instant messaging will galvanize the mobile web according to a new report issued by market research firm Juniper Research, which forecasts the number of mobile web users will grow from 577 million in 2008 to more than 1.7 billion in 2013.

Juniper also credits expanded 2.5/3G penetration as a catalyst for mobile web uptake, but argues that mobile operators and handset makers will have to adapt their commercial strategies to accommodate greater collaboration with other segments of the value chain if its growth projections are to become a reality.

Additional findings from the Juniper report:

The Far East & China will represent the largest market for mobile web use, topping 415 million users by 2013, up from a year-end 2008 total of 190 million.
The greatest potential for mobile web adoption lies in South America, while growth opportunities in markets like Western and Eastern Europe (which enjoy greater fixed broadband penetration) are more limited.
A number of mobile Web 2.0 applications will hinge on flat-data or even free pricing, meaning industry players must seek new revenue streams. [FierceMobileContent]

Who Uses The Web on Their Mobile Phone?

Posted: Monday, June 23, 2008
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Author: pradhana
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Filed under: Mobile Web Browser

Opera's latest State of the Mobile Web report highlights demographic trends

Men outnumber women on the mobile Web almost nine to one according to Opera's latest State of the Mobile Web report, published today. This edition provides demographic insight into the people browsing the Web on their mobile phones. The report is available in its entirety from this Mobile Report.

Select highlights from the May report:

Men use the mobile Web most: 88.1 percent of people using the mobile Web are males.
Most people using Opera Mini are between the ages of 18-27.
More than 14.7 million people used Opera Mini in May to browse 2.9 billion pages. The number of active users has risen more than 23 percent since March.
Opera Mini served more than 43.2 million MB of data traffic in May, up 30.4% since March.
As Opera Mini serves compressed data to handsets around the world, the actual amount of data requested by people using Opera Mini is more than 288 million MB.

"In the previous report, we looked at what people did on the mobile Web. With this next report we look at who uses the mobile Web," said Jon von Tetzchner, Chief Executive Officer, Opera Software. "Because accessing the Web on mobile devices will become more pervasive than accessing the Web with computers, we expect that over time one gender or one age range willnot dominate. We will see how these numbers change in time as more people discover the absolute convenience of browsing the Web on their mobile phones."

Special Spotlight:

SportsWith the UEFA Euro 2008 football tournament happening this month and the Olympics following next month, the report also includes a spotlight on the most popular sports sites on the mobile Web.

As the world's most popular Web browser for mobile phones, Opera Mini provides an elegant, fast and rich Web browsing experience. While some Web browsers work on only 20 to 30 phone models, Opera Mini runs on more than 800 different handsets, making it the available to the widest range of consumers worldwide. Almost every phone with Java can run Opera Mini.

Completely free for anyone to download and use, Opera Mini is available from http://www.operamini.com/.

Data in the report is based on aggregate and anonymous statistics from Opera Mini servers. All percentages are based on a snapshot of the Top 100 sites for each region. Demographic data was collected from voluntary user surveys that were made available to a random subset of Opera Mini users, via their handsets, in English, Russian, Chinese, German and Polish. Surveys responses were collected between February 2008 and June 2008.

Beyond providing a snapshot of worldwide browsing trends, Opera's "State of the Mobile Web" highlights the browsing trends in the ten countries where Opera Mini is most popular: the United States, Russia, China, Indonesia, India, United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, South Africa and Ukraine. /PR

Mozilla Mobile Web Browser Expected in Late 2008

Posted: Tuesday, June 17, 2008
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Author: pradhana
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Filed under: Mobile Web Browser, Mozilla

By Jason Ankeny

Following today's release of its Firefox 3 web browser, open-source development initiative Mozilla will now shift its focus to putting the finishing touches on its first Firefox mobile web browser, with a first public glimpse expected this September. Speaking to BusinessMobile.fr, Mozilla Europe president Tristan Nitot said development on the Firefox mobile edition (codenamed "Fennec") is moving ahead, with the process expected to accelerate in the weeks ahead--following September's first overview, a beta release is anticipated by year's end.

While Mozilla will support operating systems including Windows Mobile, Symbian and Linux, Nitot confirmed it will not develop versions for Apple's iPhone or Google's Android: "For the iPhone, Apple's license cannot install software to have an interpreted language. But Firefox includes JavaScript, which makes it legally impossible to carry on the iPhone," he writes on his blog. "For Android, Webkit is integrated into the OS, and only Java applications can run. And Firefox is not written in Java. So that's why. However, in both cases, things may change in future, but it does not depend on Mozilla." [FierceDeveloper]