Massive growth in mobile browser use

The mobile browser market will grow to 1.5 billion units worldwide by 2013, due to emerging browser software that can take advantage of the latest 'Web 2.0' technologies.

ABI Research, said in its new study, The Mobile Browser Market that smartphones incorporating browsers, which support the latest capabilities such as AJAX and RSS, as well as websites optimised for viewing on a mobile device would account for the majority of growth in this sector over the next five years.

It predicted that, while a large number of phones today still use browsers with very limited web browsing capabilities, growth in the open internet browser (OIB) segment for mobile will increase from 76 million in 2007 to nearly 700 million browsers delivered in 2013.

Michael Wolf, ABI Research director pointed to recently released commercial software from Opera, Openwave and ACCESS, in addition to those that use open source software, like Webkit, are opening up mobile internet to users without the limitations due to the traditional browser constraints of Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) service and its descendents.

"The focus today for mobile browser developers is to take advantage of the latest web standards while also developing solutions tailored towards the unique experience of using a browser on a mobile phone," he said.

But the report sounds a cautionary note, pointing out that despite the best efforts of browser vendors and handset manufacturers, mobile internet devices still have some way to go in closing the gap with PC-based browsers.

It said, for example, that the absence of important plug-ins like Flash on many handsets and the practical constraints of many phones compared to a PC mean that even OIB browser vendors such as Skyfire will continue to rely on server-assisted architectures for transcoding and web acceleration.

"There is a lot of development momentum for web content on mobile phones," Wolf added. But he said the transition from server to web-based applications and architectures would be key, where browsers can render web pages without the need for proxy server-based content adaptation and automatically adjust layout for the screen and navigation requirements of a given handset.

"Ultimately, the long-term trend away from native applications to web-based applications means browser and web services engines will be increasingly important components in the mobile environment," he said.

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