Ask any Web developer to name a few browsers and you’ll get basically the same list: IE, FireFox, Safari, Opera and a few others. Ask them to name a few mobile browsers and the answers will vary considerably. If you want to be able to give a fairly complete answer to such a question, here’s a short list…
Android – strictly the name of Google’s Linux-based mobile OS, the built-in browser is based on WebKit. For added functionality, a popular free touch-based UI layer for the browser is Steel.
Kindle – a monochrome mobile e-book reader from Amazon, it comes with an experimental Web browser capable of basic text layouts. The UA reports the browser to be NetFront/3.3.
BlackBerry – the browser from RIM embedded [click title to read more…]
Named after the diminuitive Saharan fox, the Fennec browser is FireFox for mobile. About a year ago, just as we were expecting the new FireFox 3 to appear, a team at Mozilla had created a working version for mobile after 6 months of work. A year on, have they made good on the promise of a desktop experience on mobile, or must we keep waiting?
Beta 1
The first beta of Fennec appeared two months ago and is now available for Windows Mobile and the Nokia N810. The WM download is a 25Mb installation, significantly bigger than the Minimo version we were building in the office two years ago. Minimo preceded Fennec and was very heavy on resources. (The Nokia-funded [click title to read more…]
The new Palm Pre seems to have gotten up the nose of acting Apple CEO Tim Cook, who is quoted as saying that Apple “will not stand for having our IP ripped off and we’ll use whatever weapons we have at our disposal,” or words to that effect, as the blogosphere is quoting several variations on the theme. Cook, also Apple’s COO, was being interviewed during an Apple Earnings Call when the question of Palm competition was raised. What may be upsetting Apple is not the claims that the Pre is an iPhone killer, because such claims are two-a-penny these days, but that for the first time the claims may be true. At least, that’s what many people are starting [click title to read more…]
It seems that the number of mobile TV users in Japan has recently exceeded 20 million. A few years ago I went on record to say I found it incredulous to believe that people would want to carry around a tiny TV screen. I still have one from the early 90s and never got much use from it. (Certainly not enough to justify the price.) 20 million subscribers prove me wrong.
Paul Miller (Director for Mobile and Wireless at Symantec) revealed that according to a Symantec survey, the typical mobile user changes mobile device on average every 17 months. I’m assuming this is a US figure. He revealed the information at the afternoon session of the Mobile Web Americas conference, shortly after I delivered a presentation of my own. Interestingly, Paul also revealed that Symantec had introduced central purchasing for employee mobile devices, presumably so that they could ensure the right level of mobile security. While possibly necessary, it was quite obviously an unpopular idea. People treat their phones very personally. It would be like your boss telling you what kind of wallet to carry, what kind of car to drive [click title to read more…]