Forget the statistics, the “key words” or even foward looking statements. Although strictly not under the purview of the blog, mobile Internet has attracted the attention of lot of people. Even though, it cannot support the applications that a true broadband needs (due to inherent limitations of medium), it is perceived to be cheaper than laying down optic fibre cables. The existing mobile towers can be rejigged and made to serve the customers with fewer incremental investments.

In any case, this again is a reflection of state of mobile internet in India. Opera has launched Appia powered Mobile App Store which would serve the needs for “apps”. I am not aware of how the apps are coded but perhaps they are platform agnostic.

Opera Mini is on a roll. Not only they have a clear dominance in over 200 countries but a simple elegant Java powered mobile app is awesome. I have used it on my Android and can testify to it’s usefulness. Infact, it is easy to download and run it on an emulator and use it tethered to your GPRS handset.

Mini has also been sucessful over it’s mobile counterparts (or something like BOLT which are alternatives in mobile space) for one simple reason; it’s ability to compress the data and serve it to end user. So far, they have not mentioned about the huge amount of data flowing in through their data centre but nevertheless, they would be willing to scale up, build profiles (if I am not mistaken, best way out would be individually numbering each download) and then serve it up for targetted advertisments. It is all a matter of scale.

On the flip side, it’s petition in EU against Microsoft has not really worked “the wonders” that it was required to. It’s desktop share is still a pathetic 2% worldwide despite being ahead in the innovation game. I am using Firefox 4 presently (nightly builds) and can testify that it is one of most significant advances in the history of open source browsers. Though Web Kit based browsers are cool (over proprietary engines like Presto- which again is a matter of debate), I can see some real heavy lifting done by Firefox; be it in extension development or all around stability fixes.

At least, on my Linux Mint installation (with a few other extensions) it is a great product; in consonance with Thunderbird, the migration to Open Source is complete.

Getting back to Opera, it still needs to tone up it’s work flow. At least, that seems to be a despondent mood on the forums/ news groups. After sticking out years crowing about web standards (yes, they are important) but persistent arguments about Acid 3 compliance and being the “fastest” out their are wearing thin. I care not about the fancy “tests” for they have no meaning for me as far as the page is rendered on my useless BSNL. I see the lag where it matters the most and is hurting Opera users.

Still, I wish them the best for their app store which would be a significant gain of revenues; it could have been implemented with some form of micropayments (which would be a pain to implement it) in an ecosystem where there is no clear defined “way out”. App based advertisments (like Angry Birds for Android) is surely a way to go.

Related articles

• Opera Launches Appia-Powered Mobile App Store To The Public (techcrunch.com)
• App Stores Everywhere! Opera Opens Mobile App Storefront (gigaom.com)
• Opera Opens Mobile App Store That Works With (Almost) All OSes (mashable.com)
• Opera Opens Cross Platform Mobile App Store (readwriteweb.com)

Tags: Acid 3, android, Angry Birds, App Store, Broadband, BSNL, Computing, DTH, Embedded Linux, Google, GPRS, India, Internet, iPhone, Java, Linux, Media, Microsoft, Mobile, Mobile WebMobile Web, Open Source, Opera, Opera Launches Appia-Powered Mobile App Store To The Public, Opera Mini, techcrunch.com, Telecommunications India, Web Kit, web standards

The methodology can always be disputed. India lags behind China in everything and not surprisingly in adoption to open source. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 still rules the roost and I strongly suspect that the Government of the day has not passed notifications to “upgrade their infrastructure”.

Interestingly, the statics from stat counter tell a different story. If you look carefully, the bars are segmented differently for Chrome (having multiple instances) whereas, “other browsers” are lumped in one category.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Version Market Share

(This allows the script to be run on the blog, please disable any ad blockers or No-script if you have one enabled).

Interesting. Although I insist that I don’t agree to the opaque methodology being used here; there could be many variables linked to the actual usage statistics. Opera Mini rules the roost as far as mobile browsers are concerned. This is also a reflection of the broadband uptake; pathetic story.

This also set me thinking. Why don’t we have something similar in India? Why can’t we have any application developed locally to visualize data?

Tags: Broadband, China, Google Chrome, India, Internet, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Mobile, Open Source, Opera, Opera Mini, Social Issues, Technology_Internet, Telecommunications India

This news has come in from FastCompany

As it says:
The Webbox is externally just a 14cm by 25cm QWERTY keyboard that has an RCA cable dangling from its rear–this coaxial cable will connect to a domestic TV tuned to a particular channel, and lets Webbox content appear on its screen. Inside it’s pretty sophisticated, with the guts of a 3G smartphone powering it–it runs over EDGE or 2.5G networks to get its data, and leverages Opera’s Mini browser suite (which compresses web pages to much smaller file sizes remotely) to ensure that the data burden on cell phone networks is low–which is good for low-income users and struggling cell networks alike–and that the device works swiftly.

It is an interesting concept. It combines a ‘mobile telephony’ through 2.5G (or horrors of horrors through GPRS) and thence output through your television.

I have run Opera Mini on my laptop through Java Emulator; it’s brilliant access at times when I don’t have access to Wifi. This Internet TV is something similar in it’s approach although they have routed the output through a usual TV.

However, this is not the end all. Heavy Java Script sites would not work; although the demo is not clear, Opera Mini is expected to run the mobile versions alone; this is not a very pleasant experience.

What gets my goose is that India has been lumped with the bygone nations -Kenya, Ghana and others. This only reflects their “poverty of thought” and generalized assholism. I am not a fan of Vodafone at all; despite their slick advertisements, it does nothing to “serve” it’s customers and perhaps one of the worst telecom companies. Nevertheless, this is a good innovation; it remains to be see how well they are able to capitalize on this, if and when it is launched.

Oh by the way, expect some rather crude “download limits”; these buggers are going to charge you per kb. Their billing systems are pathetic and try wrangling out the details from their customer care executives. You’d be appalled.

Last but not the least. Beyond certain “platitudes” and ass licking in the media (with crumbs thrown at the journalists and news papers), I really doubt whether they would have a mass market for it. They could have easily loaded up Opera Mobile instead.

And yes, as the dingbat in the advertisement says about “technological leap”, it isn’t so. The mobile phone circuits (and the RAM) is cheap with an output for the TV and external keyboard. It’s not big deal but it’s a good idea.

Tags: 3G, Advertisement, API, EDGE, GPRS, India, Internet, Java, journalist, laptop, Media, Mobile, Opera, Opera Mini, Telecommunications India, Vodafone, Wifi