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State of Mobile Web: Some numbers.

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Opera Mini‘s reports on the state of mobile web are likely to be a true reflection of the mobile access and hence a surrogate marker of what’s popular at the given point in time. I am reproducing the snapshot of the Internet traffic here:

http://imgur.com/PZwCF

If you look carefully, bulk of the developing and the underdeveloped countries utilize the mobile web to access social networking sites. US (and some other developed economies) are lower down the scale.

Interestingly, the data transferred per user is a pathetic 7 MB (averaged over the month perhaps?) which means that operators are still being generous with their limits. However,  this is a crude approximation. For once, we have a clear proof that mobile internet is definitely a part of their value added services kitty but is NOT the revenue driver for them. They are offering it because there is no alternative.

This also explains their aggressive stance to get the 3G spectrum; primarily to add more voice customers than to offer data services.

If you look at the snapshot of the popular phones, Nokia is still leading the pack but majority of them are NOT smartphones. These java based handsets are pathetic in terms of functionality and at best useful for “checking the status updates” on Facebook.

A surprise entry is that of “Micromax” handset; they have capitalized on aggressive marketing and low price entry point.

Unfortunately, this does not portend good for the broadband initiatives. A cursory glance at the top sites (Google leads the pack) is only indicative. Google has benefited from being the default search engine on the browser and hence the port of call for any search. I barely use my handset for GPRS (or EDGE) for web surfing because smartphones (and their form factor) is basically useless to transact anything useful. For me, the only reason to invest is for email.

Nevertheless, this report can again be questioned in terms of “growth of users”. It is not clear about how the methodology has been arrived at and what has constituted the “growth in real terms”. However, one thing is clear. Most of the web sites focused on Indian content don’t have mobile strategies to counter the growth in the user base. Pathetic.

Indeed, with majority of the young adults unable to read/write or even engage in meaningful conversations on Indian polity, this “dumbification” was expected.

Facebook, although shows some presence (in terms of mobile access), mobile broadband is still “not hot” in US of A. There could be myriad factors but then Opera’s state of web access is best a “snapshot” of the handsets and it’s deal with the OEM‘s to bundle the product.

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This icon, known as the "feed icon" ...

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I have cleaned up the sidebar; unfortunately, in it’s prior avatar, it was rather bland. Changes were made to the tag cloud and a category cloud has been added.

One of the major changes in the side bar is addition of Duckduckgo as the default search engine for this site. I have been using it extensively over the past few months and I recommend it thoroughly. I have been in touch with it’s developer, who’s put in his own money and has interesting ideas that are being implemented. My only concern about not using other search engines is the opaque policies on privacy and building up an online user profile to track down the individual customer. The technology isn’t perfect but a major impetus on social network has it downsides.

I am a big fan of RSS; I can’t imagine my life without it. Flipboard and other news readers have gained prominence in recent times, are all RSS readers. Unfortunately, a reader is as good as dead; I haven’t seen any major revamp of Google Reader as yet. I do have some ideas panned out about an ideal RSS reader (namely extraction of data and analyzing and categorizing data in real time), but there has been no development of late. (The only example that comes to my mind is Mutt, but it does not have a GUI front end and it’s terminal interface appeals to it’s users so it’s static there). Feed Daemon is a great client for Windows but I don’t use it so it’s disappointment again.

Nevertheless, now you can have RSS feeds for each category listed. The default has been applied after the revamp so you would get to see it more prominently on the cloud.

I haven’t updated “About” page so a cleaning there is also warranted.

The idea is to make it easier to port OUT the content; rather than the people coming on to the main site. Please email me in case you find any problems in accessing the content since I have extensively checked the implementation on my side.

 

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Opera Mail and Mini

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"O" logo used by Opera Software as t...

Image via Wikipedia

Opera Mini has touched over 100 million users riding on exclusive deals with various operators. It should indeed be a moment of pride for them; but at the same time, earning undisclosed revenue from Google as the default search engine.

This news comes at the heels of launch of new Opera Mail (link to their mail blog) which gives away 1 GB of free email space and full IMAP access. As a long standing customer of Fastmail (full enhanced access), I can testify for the service as near perfect. In the past 4 years, it possibly had about less than an hour of a downtime. My Opera had been conceptualized as a community based effort and has undergone radical changes in the past few years. And it has become better over the past few years of usage; interestingly, Opera has the best sync among the browsers baked right in.

Indeed, it has been at the innovation curve and nothing really beats it’s mobile offering. As a testimony to it’s growing user base, even Youporn has a dedicated option for opera mini users :)

Opera has done the right thing to bet it’s money on mobile offering. While it’s desktop may not be a hot property (I no longer use it because of Firefox 4), I would be on it’s on long term growth in mobile and connected devices where it is poised for a massive leap in times to come. And yes, one of the most understated technologies from Opera- it’s widgets. As standalone “objects”, they are platform agnostic; i.e. they can run on ANY platform if coded for. Much like the RSS feeds though.

I am unlikely to see any improvements in it’s feed reader in the near future (or atleast the company has not communicated anything so far). If I were to take a decision, I would market the desktop browser as a “content discovery engine”. The RSS feeds be contextually linked in form of tags (incluuding the emails) based on the text of the email/feeds coming through.

Email is the next logical option; I wouldn’t be surprised to see a basic form of email delivery through the mobile browser in times to come or at least some form of email notifications. Fastmail has the infrastructure to scale up; but I think their servers are going to be different but with the same Cyrus backend and absolutely topnotch IMAP services.

Where next? Opera, being opera, can code browsers alone. M2 Mail client is the best cross platform client out there (I think after thunderbird), and there is some talk to replicate the same “format” on the web. Nevertheless, the minimalist outlay is going to work fine though.

Since, my enhanced fastmail option lets me choose aliases (multiple though), I am a proud owner of two different aliases with Operamail domain :)

Way to go Opera.

Polish up your desktop browser, more (since we need the best and nothing but the best), and I would be glad to come back to it again :)

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