Mobile Browsers

Mobile Browsers

A user recently asked about mobile support in IntraWeb XII, specifically Opera Mini.

I’m not writing this post to single that user out. The user had avalid question, but I thought that others would be interested in theresponse as well so I have posted it here as a blog post.

IW XII will be focusing on moving forward to HTML 5 (we will stillsupport the existing HTML 4 as well). But here is why we will notsupport Opera or Opera mini:

From April 2010

That grey line is probably Android.

Opera appears to be used primarily in Nigeria and India. While useful tothose phone owners, the bottom end of the phone market its not where IWis targeting.

http://www.ithinkdiff.com/opera-still-rules-mobile-browser-market-share-worldwide-followed-by-iphone-android-at-a-distinct-6th-position-9612/
This one is very telling…. At first you think wow! Look at Opera..but then when you realize that most of those are a few billion Indianswho don’t have home computers and are accessing only very limitedwebsites… See the second graph which shows the US… The US numbersare representative of Europe, Russia, and other countries where thepeople that have the phones also have electricity and home computers.

Note that Blackberry is huge, but we aren’t supporting it either. Thisis because BB web access goes through a proxy and its very restrictedand has problems with *lots* of sites. BB users typically don’t use theweb in a wide way, but are more focused on mail and messaging.

Then lets consider smart phones only.. why? Well normal phones canaccess the web, but they have small screens and people really don’t useit for full web access. If someone is going to really use the web, theyare going to have a smart phone. When we look at smart phones:

You cant even see Opera. And notice what happens to Blackberry? (RIMOS) Even Windows Mobile is nothing… Basically in the mobile worldtoday for phone users who actually use the web as a major function, itsdown to Apple and Android. Those are the only two players.

We will not prevent Opera from being used as an IntraWeb client, but wewill not be doing any testing of it.