On June 18, we conducted the second webinar of the 2009 Mobile Minute series – “Making a Better Mobile Browser”. Led by FierceWireless as part of its FierceLive! webinar program, the event attracted 317 registrations and 126 unique live visitors from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America, the U.S., and Canada. You can access a full replay of the webinar on the Mobile Minute page of Bytemobile’s website.

FierceWireless Editor-in-Chief Sue Marek moderated a panel consisting of (from left to right below) Mark Donovan, senior vice president of Mobile and senior analyst at comScore; Phil Parry, mobile browser interaction manager in the Design and Usability unit at Orange Group; and Adrian Hall, chief marketing officer at Bytemobile.

Mark Donovan began the discussion with a profile of the mobile market segments today, indicating that mobile media users – defined as browsers, application users and downloaders – had grown 24% from last year and now constituted the largest segment at 35%. The key drivers include device technology, network speed and adoption of unlimited data plans. Donovan noted that the U.S. had surpassed Europe in data plan penetration and that growth will accelerate as networks become faster and data costs stabilize. He cited browsing and social networking as the fastest growing mobile data activities, with the latter increasing 170% from last year, followed by applications at 111%. In the U.S., daily news and information access on mobile devices is overtaking the circulation of daily newspapers. Donovan concluded with a review of the leading smartphone domains, which are dominated by social networking and community services, news and information, and entertainment. Excluding social networking, web search, weather and news are the leading mobile browsing genres.

Phil Parry of Orange followed with the operator’s perspective on the mobile browsing platform and business model, noting the fragmentation of the market and the pros and cons of the PC internet experience and the mobile internet experience. Parry categorized the challenges to be addressed in closing this gap as user, economic (operator) and developer issues. He echoed Donovan’s point about smartphone penetration as a major factor in the evolution of web browsing technologies and then focused on the competitive landscape for web runtime platforms, which is moving toward service discovery and personalization. Within this context, Parry noted that today 58% of Orange subscribers search the Web through Orange World, the operator’s portal, while 78% circumvent the portal for direct access. He summarized the mobile platform and web-based application development environments and the balance between portability and performance. In conclusion, Parry stated that Orange would support the development of best-of-breed mobile web services with a unique operator-based platform and continued focus on the design of the user experience.

Adrian Hall’s segment of the panel played off of Donovan’s and Parry’s segments and shared Bytemobile’s experience in working with more than 100 operators worldwide on the evolution of their networks and data services. Hall underscored the importance of personalization to the success of the mobile Internet, highlighting Bytemobile’s Widget Bar as an example of a smart browsing tool that enables customization of the user experience from within the network and supports the implementation of new business models. He also reminded the audience that content adaptation has valid uses cases for all mobile devices – including even the highest-end smartphones, such as the iPhone and the new Android devices. Hall closed with a quick summary of Bytemobile’s product portfolio, again relating key points back to the comments of the other two speakers.

Following the individual presentations, Sue Marek took selected questions from the webinar participants. These questions ranged from the match-up between application requirements and browser capabilities to battery life, from the fragmentation of the mobile space to social networking opportunities and the impact of bandwidth constraints on application developers.

In addition, the audience was polled on the multiple-choice question heading the chart below:

The response emphasizes the fact that improving the mobile browsing experience is a multi-point solution – diversity of opinion notwithstanding, there is no single answer. Moreover, the Bytemobile product portfolio supports either directly or indirectly the key components of the solution.

Please note that the next webinar on mobile multimedia and the changing wireless traffic mix – also to be led by FierceWireless – is scheduled for July 15. You can register here.

-Jaishree Subramania

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The current trend in Europe is for mobile operators to become internet service providers (ISP).  Recently, an Austrian operator told me that this year it has sold more ISP connections than mobile connections.  In Sweden, mobile broadband is being offered at a price similar to that of fixed broadband, suggesting that Austria is not unique.

Over the last decade, mobile operators have slowly but surely eroded the hold that fixed operators have had on the consumer.  First, it was voice, and now it seems the same is happening for the Internet — witness the exponential rise in the popularity of the USB dongle.  The attraction for the user is obvious: one relationship for all services, no installation charges and the ability to be truly mobile.  Today, many operators offer a free laptop in exchange for an 18-month commitment.  How can you lose?

How will fixed line operators respond to this threat?  They have already made their network investments, so all they need to do now is utilize their assets.  With multimedia rapidly becoming a pervasive force, network capacity and effective bandwidth will be critical factors.  In such circumstances, won’t the fixed line operator have the upper hand?

I’m not so sure.  Mobility is a key criterion.  Freedom is something that users will always want; once they have it, they will never give it up.  For the vast majority of consumers, mobile networks will impose no bandwidth restrictions.  Operators are constantly investing in their networks.  Thanks to data optimization and media transcoding, most users will be hard-pressed to discern the difference between a fixed network and a mobile network — nor will they even care.  For mobile operators, there is also an effective one-to-one brand relationship with end users.  Thus, they can deliver a truly personalized and relevant consumer service across an entire portfolio of offerings — something that fixed line operators will find difficult if not impossible to match.

Infrastructure providers offering service delivery platforms to the consumer will turn up the heat on the ISP market.  When that happens, we should all expect some dramatic changes in the road ahead.

- Graham Carey

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