The document provides an overview of the mobile browsing landscape in Australia and recommendations for a mobile web app strategy. It analyzes the current state of mobile operating systems and browsers, trends toward web applications, and challenges of testing across devices. It recommends focusing web development on the five largest platforms and taking a staged approach from basic mobile websites to optimized apps for specific devices.

1. jTribe
Mobile OS/Browser Report
A Report of Australian Mobile Browser Landscape and
Approach for Mobile Web App Strategy
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2. Content and Scope
A. Overview of the current Mobile Browsing
Marketplace, with a focus on Australia
B. Mobile Browsing Trends
C. Recommended Mobile Browsing Strategy
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3. A. Overview of the current Mobile
Browsing marketplace, with a focus
on Australia
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4. Who is using mobile browsers?
Many phones on the market include a mobile web browser. Even low-
end phones include a web browser but the majority of users would not
make use of the browser due to the limitations and perceived costs of
their mobile phone plan. Generally, the low-end plans are not made for
browsing the web. Low-end plans target the consumers of voice and SMS
services.
It is the medium and business plans as well the new lifestyle plans (i.e.
iphone cap) that encourage the user to use the web browsers. These
plans come with the medium to higher-end phones. Users that are most
comfortable in using mobile browsers are the corporate users and
lifestyle users of smart phones. Operating systems for smart phones are
RIM Blackberry, iPhone OS, Palm OS, Symbian S60, Windows Mobile and
Android.
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5. Mobile OS
• Nokia with Symbian S60 has currently the largest
market penetration.
• Blackberry is currently most popular phone in US. Current and future state of Mobile OS
However, 50% Blackberry users say next phone will
be an iPhone. Blackberry has large penetration in
corporate user base in Australia but will give up
some of its market to Apple in the next years.
• Google’s Android OS is gaining momentum and we 15%
1%
1% 11% 2% 14%
expect that it will reach more than 10% market 22%
share in the next year in Australia. Many device
manufacturers are using Android for their next
10%
generation of phones. Devices are already available in 13%
Australia.
28%
• Windows Mobile and iPhone OS have currently the
same market size but will fall behind quickly due to
the incredible popularity of the iPhone. 34%
48%
• Windows Mobile is going to loose market share and
Blackberry
will be even with with Google Android for the next
Symbian
2 years.
>2010
iPhone
• Apple has aggressively gained market share in the
last 1-2 years. Their OS is not only the basis for 2009 Windows Mobile
Android
Palm prediction
phone devices but also for lifestyle devices like the
iPod. This will strengthen their position even more
and will make the iPhone OS the most popular OS
by 2010.
• Nokia will be overtaken by Apple by 2012. [2]. As it Source:
turns out the iPhone is already overtaken Nokia in 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone
August 2009 in the smart phone area. [6]. 2. http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=20874
• The relevant platforms for the next 2-5 years will be 3. http://www.rcrwireless.com/article/20090224/WIRELESS/902239977/-1
4. http://metrics.admob.com/
iPhone OS, Android, Symbian, Blackberry and
Windows Mobile. 5. jTribe market research
6. http://metrics.admob.com/2009/09/august-2009-mobile-metrics-report/
• Palm has less significance in Australia but could pick
up due to their newly released WebOS platform.
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6. The Mobile Web
Mobile Web: Content vs Application
• The term Mobile Web describes web apps and web
sites that are targeting mobile users through mobile
Mobile web applications and mobile web content
sites have different characteristics which are
browsers. W3C’s mobile web standards are used important for our clients.
for creating mobile web sites.
W3C Best Practices (excerpt) [1]: • Mobile web content - Simple content pages
without dynamic elements. Usually based on
• Exploit device capabilities to provide an enhanced user XHTML as it is supported by all major mobile
experience
browsers. Mainly used by content provides like
• Take reasonable steps to work around deficient
news publishers.
implementations
• Carry out testing on actual devices as well as • Mobile web applications - dynamic content and
emulators. high degree of user interaction to produce the
• Provide only minimal navigation at the top of the page content from a backend system. Technologies
• Provide consistent navigation mechanisms. used are AJAX and JavaScript. Mainly used by
• Do not use image maps unless you know the device application providers like Google for apps like
supports them effectively. Calendar or Latitude.
• Do not cause pop-ups or other windows to appear
and do not change the current window without
informing the user.
Source:
1. http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-mobile-bp-20080729/
2. http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=65923
3. http://mobile.fairfax.com.au/
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7. Mobile Browsers
• There are approximately 20 different mobile browsers on the market (full list at
[1])
• jTribe’s experience shows that the relevant mobile browsers in Australia are:
Blackberry Browser, Symbian S60 Browser, Safari for iPhone OS, Internet Explorer
Mobile,, Opera Mobile, Android Browser.
• Support of standards - the browsers listed above have most Web 2.0 features.
However, sophisticated Web 2.0 websites are less usable on a mobile phone
browser and making sure they work on the different mobile browsers is very
costly.
• Technolgies - Many vendors are basing their browsers on WebKit. WebKit is an
open source web browser engine release by Apple and is used in many mobile
browsers like Safari on the iPhone and iPod Touch, Symbian S60, Android, Palm
WebOS and several others.
Source:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbrowser
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8. Mobile Browsers are different
The user experience on a mobile browser is very different to a desktop web browser. The
differences should to be acknowledged when designing a mobile suite of web pages. Many mobile
web sites are therefore much simpler and follow a different navigation paradigm to their desktop
relatives. Here is a brief list of the top differentiators:
Limitations:
• Screen size makes desktop optimised web pages not very usable on a mobile browser
(see mobile style later). This is also a problem when accessibility requirements exit.
• Some devices/browsers do not support plug-ins like Flash. Rich content and
sophisticated web2.0 features might not work.
• It takes long to render large or graphically rich desktop web pages on a mobile device
due to lower bandwidth and/or less computing power of the device This leads to user
frustration.
• Testing a mobile web site on the variety of exiting mobile browsers is almost impossible.
Distinct Features:
• Location data now available in new Safari (Google uses HTML 5 location feature already
on iPhone for Latitide)
• Screen rotation - can be used to improve user experience
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9. B. Mobile Browsing Trends
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10. Mobile Browsing Trends
• The new generation of mobile devices has created a ”gold rush” in mobile application
development. Besides native applications as promoted by Apple there is are companies
like Google who push towards web based applications that run on mobile browsers. In
the last months Google has released several web based applications for WebKit-powered
browsers with a sophistication that could only be provide by native apps so far. With the
new standards like HTML 5 and more processing power on smart phones the will be
many more applications released for mobile web browsers.
• The trend for web based applications seems to provide applications that are optimized
for the different devices. Each devices has it’s own user experience guidelines. Apple
provides “User Interface Guidelines” for iPhone apps. These guidelines are enforced for
native apps and are encouraged for web applications to provide a consistent usage
model to the end- user.
• Key web technologies that come into play for web applications are AJAX and JavaScript
in combination with XHTML for static pages.
• The navigation model for mobile apps is very different to the desktop browser versions.
The trend is to break information into smaller units. The data is loaded from the server
and rendered on the device using JavaScript libraries. While presenting the first unit the
remaining units are dynamically loaded in the background using AJAX and are promptly
available when the user needs them. This approach offers minimum latency and
impressive usability.
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11. Mobile Content Sample
Google is at the forefront in terms of cross-mobile web pages. Here is an
example how Google applies different styles for desktop Browsers and Mobile
Browsers
Firefox on PC Safari on iPhone
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12. Mobile App Sample
Google apps supports Android and iPhone and other WebKit-based browsers.
Forms and on-screen keyboards allow for less complex forms.
Everything is simpler on a mobile browser
Calendar web app Calendar web app iGoogle web app on
on Android on iPhone Safari Palm WebOS
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13. The big Challenge
The biggest challenge for Mobile Web providers is the “Testing Challenge”. Testing the
web site for all the different browsers and devices very complex and costly.
Rarely all devices are available for testing. Mobile development is still a very niche area
that requires specialised skills.
The degree of testing increases with the degree of dynamic features used (i.e 3rd
party JavaScript libraries may not be
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14. C. Recommendations for the
mobile browsing platforms
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15. Recommended Platforms
Based on the future state of the market and our experience we
recommend to focus on the five biggest browser platforms.
Safari for Web Browser Blackberry Android Web Opera Mini
iPhone and for S60 Web Browser Browser Web Browser
iPod Touch
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16. Recommended Approach
We recommend that a mobile web application strategy is developed in stages in the following order:
• Start with Lowest Common Denominator: build a mobile website using simple XHTML and web 1.0
technologies to guarantee compatibility with most mobile browsers.
• Then build specific Web Apps for better user acceptance and user experience on the particular
device
• iPhone
• Symbian S60
• Blackberry
• Android
• Opera Mini
This approach will make the web app available to a large percentage of mobile users and at the same time
provides optimal user experience for the particular device and mobile browser.
uncopyrighted Prepared by jTribe, July 2009; http://jtribe.com.au