The latest browser wars – Internet Explorer versus Firefox – that were so far limited to the desktop are going mobile. Today, Microsoft announced a new mobile browser called Deepfish as a technology preview. The news of this new Microsoft Mobile browser follows the release of Minimo 0.2, a mobile browser (that uses Mozilla technologies) for Windows Mobile devices.
For now Deepfish, Minimo and all comers are chasing Opera which is a mobile heavyweight. Microsoft’s Deepfish has some of the same features that are already available on Opera’s browser for Windows Mobile devices. (Opera is available for other platforms as well.)
The Deepfish announcement should be juxtaposed with Opera’s recent wins at some of the major Windows Mobile handset makers. Opera’s presence in their own backyard must be worrying the Barons of Redmond.
One of the other major contenders in the mobile browser arena is Nokia. The Finnish phone maker is working tirelessly on its Webkit-based browser which for now is exclusively on the Symbian platform. We hear that they will be making some announcements soon.
The interest in mobile web browsers shouldn’t come as a surprise: web-based service providers like Yahoo and Google are going increasingly mobile, cutting deals with handset makers, and trying to find relevance beyond the PC.
Mobile phones are primary edge devices in countries like India, Brazil, Russia and China, and if web-based companies have to grow, they need to find opportunities amongst these users. Stay tuned because the interest in these mobile browsers is only going to increase in coming months.
Memo to Microsoft and Channel 10: If you make a product announcement and the product is coming out of your own labs, you cannot call your video “exclusive.” It is part of your promotional material.
Om:
I have one word to say: WebKit
WebKit, WebKit, WebKit! Its open source, is backed by Apple and Nokia and provides the HTML engine that Adobe is using in the new Apollo product. iPhone will show off what WebKit can do even more so than Apple’s Safari and Steve Jobs will once again show the world how to do it right. I just can’t wait for iPhone, its going to whale on all these other wannabes!!!
My current favorite is Opera Mini…
Nicely published about mobile browser battels,iPhone will show off what WebKit can do even more so than Apple’s Safari and Steve Jobs will once again show the world how to do it right. visit my site also.
Yep and MS if you are going to launch a technology and widely advertise it as beta make sure that more than a handful of people are invited for the beta, I went to the download site at 7.30am (est usa) or about 4 hours after the first press releases and ONLY after entering my email address was I told you were no longer allowing downloads….hmmm nice if you had of told me that before I provided you my email address.
Cheers,
Dean Collins
http://www.collins.net.pr/blog
Yep and MS if you are going to launch a technology and widely advertise it as beta make sure that more than a handful of people are invited for the beta, I went to the download site at 7.30am (est usa) or about 4 hours after the first press releases and ONLY after entering my email address was I told you were no longer allowing downloads….hmmm nice if you had of told me that before I provided you my email address.
Cheers,
Dean Collins
http://www.collins.net.pr/blog
Windows mobile 2003 (the smart phone OS which was existent an year back) has been completely ignored by Microsoft. This browser (and almost all the new smartphone software) is not supported by WM2003. Totally rubbish, considering the old OS is not even 1 year old. And No, I cannot upgrade from 2003 version to Windows Mobile 5. For this I have to buy a new phone.
the battle is definitely will be hotted up as we have no original universal mobile browser
game, set & match: msft
msft vs opera: 0-6, 2-6, 7-6, 6-3, 6-0
I doubt Microsoft is worried about Opera … if or when they are, they would buy them with 1/2 the interest $$ they get from their bank accounts in an afternoon :p
Point taken. 😉 From now on we’re going to use the phrase “First Look”
Thanks,
Larry Larsen
Group Manager
Channel 10
I’m pretty happy with Opera when Pocket IE sucks.
“iPhone will show off what WebKit can do even more so than Apple’s Safari and Steve Jobs will once again show the world how to do it right. I just can’t wait for iPhone, its going to whale on all these other wannabes!!!”
LOL.
Safari on iPhone is just ripping off what other people have been doing for years. Jobs is good at hyping stuff and pretending that he invented something, but that doesn’t change the fact that what he showed us with the iPhone browser is nothing new. Even Nokia has done stuff like that.
I have used Opera Mini for ½ a year and it is great. Why?
1. It is 100% free
2. It (preformats) compress all information = faster and cheaper. Last quarters bill was less than a euro.
3. The startup page includes wikipedia – very often we start to talk about something and wants to look it up.
4. I can read/send gmail + remembers my password
5. Fast, stable and intuative.
6. Only drawback (I think) is they use yahoo as the default search engine instead of google. Some might see that as an advantage though.
+ Our brothers made it. Snyggt jobbat Norge.
A few more things
7. It mutes the surfing when you get a call, and asks if you want to continue once the call is over.
8. Starts up in less then 5 seconds.
9. Caches your your current session history – faster.
So what is on the wishlist:
I wish it could cache my last sessions, for offline surfing. Memory is not a problem since 1Gb is more or less the standard.
Open in tabs, for downloading in the background.
Plugins: Gmarks + TextToSpeach (to read me the news tickers in the car)
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