Firefox will be eat’n alive by Opera and the iPhone

OR

Which of these two images do you think will come true in the coming 12 to 24 months? In short, Mozilla are of the opinion that the first picture is a more likely outcome. However, I, alongside companies such as Apple, Nokia and Vodafone Group believe that the mobile web is soon to be a reality (or at the very least, more real). What do you think?

I was astonished to read (on Dan’s blog) that Mozilla doesn’t think users want to access the Web on mobile devices. Hence my picture above of what Mozilla must have in mind when it comes to the Web on the move, anytime, anywhere.

Dan was commentating on the Browser Panel at SXSW which was run by Arun from AOL (a colleague of mine from the W3C MWI). My buddy Charles from Opera took part too.

Brendan Eich, CTO of Mozilla is the reason for this post though. According to Dan, Brendan said

I don’t believe people are going to browse the Web on their phone. I don’t believe people want to use Wikipedia from their phone.

I’m absolutely amazed by Brendan’s view and I sincerely hope it’s his personal view and not Mozilla’s. Otherwise this $300m business faces the prospect of ending up in the bin alongside it’s parent, Netscape. For a guy who’s incredibly smart working for an organisation that has gained a market share of 10% to 12% of desktop browsers within 2 years, his comments are a little surprising to say the least. Brendan’s comments in my opinion, lack vision. Hell, they lack logic.

I couldn’t disagree more with Brendan. There are more people in the world who don’t have access to the Web than there are people who do. Of those people, most of them are in developing countries. The vast majority of them are extremely likely to use a mobile devices as their primary access point to the Web as it’s more difficult and more expensive to roll out fix lined networks than it is mobile.

Google announced some statistics recently that back up my view. BANGALORE, India (AFP) – Google vice president and chief Internet evangelist Vinton G. Cerf has predicted that mobile phones, not personal computers, will fuel growth of the worldwide web as countries like India snap up millions of handsets monthly.

From 50 million in 1997, the number of people who have logged onto the Internet has exploded to nearly 1.1 billion, Cerf, who is considered one of the founding fathers of the Internet, said Tuesday.

Yet, the Internet only reaches a sixth of the world’s population, Cerf told reporters during a visit to this southern city, known as India’s Silicon Valley, where Google has a research and development facility.

Worldwide there are 2.5 billion mobile-phone users, whose numbers are growing rapidly in developing countries led by China and India, the world’s most populous countries, Cerf said in his presentation.

India, a country of 1.1 billion people, alone is adding seven million mobile-phone users a month, a powerful enough lure for British telecom giant Vodafone to pay 11.1 billion dollars for a controlling stake in local mobile firm Hutch-Essar this month. Read the original new article.

I feel so strongly about helping to bring the Web to more people, irrespective of their disability, location or hardware, I decided to become a founding sponsor of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative (MWI). One of the goals of the MWI is to create best practice guidelines to help developers build Web sites that will work on desktop computers, but importantly, work better on mobile devices too.

Other founding sponsors include Vodafone Group, Nokia, HP, Opera, MobileAware, ftgroup and Volantis. Other active participants within the initiative include companies such as AOL, .mobi, Google and Telefonica.

The mobile web is a hot topic and there’s always room for disagreement. However, I’m still amazed to hear the fastest growing desktop browser say that it doesn’t think people will want to use a mobile to browse the Web. Perhaps they should have a chat with Apple as they have a knack for creating technology to make content consumption extremely easy.

Half way through writing this post I checked my mail to find a note from a close friend. Ian from Glaxstar asked if Brendan’s comments were perhaps taken out of context. In short, I don’t know. I can only go by Dan’s commentary which I take as trustworthy knowing Dan as well as I do – he’s a well respected individual within the Mobile industry. That said, Mozilla is working on Mini Mo according to Ian…

Thanks to Keith Waters (France Telecom) for the picture (with man) above.

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Operators feel the pinch

We kicked off our networking events for 2007 last week with a dialog about Mobile Operators’ walled gardens. Sorry for not posting before now, no excuses, just too busy with other stuff.

Thanks to Lbi, we didn’t have to worry about sore bums on hard seats. The room was nice and relaxed with big comfy two-seater sofas, helping to set the informal tone for the evening. The sofas reminded me of the good ole days of going to the cinema with a new girlfriend.

Mirage Islam, Head of Development Programme, BSkyB (and BIMA Executive) did a brilliant job at facilitating the debate, providing his own thoughts intermittently throughout the evening.

I can only give very small sound bites as BIMA dialogs and dinners are ‘off the record’, providing speakers and members of the audience, an opportunity to have a discussion in an open forum, without worrying about being quoted in the press. So, what happens on tour stays on tour.

Firstly, I’ll explain what a walled garden is in case it’s a term you’re not familiar with. Walled garden refers to the premium content that Operators sell to consumers. The content is either created by the Operator or supplied by a list of preferred suppliers who are obliged to give a cut of profits to the Operator.

According to some of the vocal attendees, this approach has made it extremely difficult for innovative content and application providers to sell direct to the consumer because it generally means they have to spend a lot of money on marketing. Some would argue that it’s not healthy for the consumer either, as it limits their choice; hence one of the reasons mobile content is so expensive.

Could you imagine BT (broadband provider) only permitting consumers to access its content and thereby restricting access to the Web? So, as you can imagine, it’s a sore spot for most providers and it’s a no-go for most investors who feel there are too many obstacles for innovative companies to break into the mobile space.

The theme lived up to my expectations with an interesting evening of direct questions being fired at our esteemed guest speakers, who I may add, provided decent answers under the pressure.

Our 3 speakers gave succinct introductions, leading them nicely into the lion’s den where numerous hungry content providers awaited to pounce. It’s very easy to take a shot at Operators for their control over consumer choice, but as our speakers demonstrated, this is, to a degree, done with good reason. Personally, I think Operators’ control was in the consumers’ best interest, but perhaps it’s now time to share the honey with the rest of the value chain.

The first of our speakers to stand up to the mark was Stephen Wolak, Web Technologies Manager, Vodafone Group R&D UK. Stephen’s main focus was on the user experience. He opened up with a quote from a book he read recently (sorry didn’t catch the name!)

When a person walks into a DIY shop to buy a drill, they don’t buy one because they need a drill, they buy one because they need holes.

This is very appropriate as I believe we sometimes forget what customers actually want and need. We tend to give them what we think they want and importantly, without asking for feedback so we can make further improvements.

In the Operators’ defence, Stephen came out with a great argument that demonstrated why he thinks Operators were (are?) right to control access to content.

We needed portals like AOL in the early days of the desktop Web. It helped to ensure users could easily find the content they were looking for in a user friendly environment. I feel the same can be said for mobile, WAP provided a user friendly environment for users in the early days. Now we can look to providing access to non-listed content.

Next up was Andrew McGrath, Director, Design and Usability, Orange. Andrew talked about Orange’s position in the market as a media owner and not just an Operator. According to Andrew

We simply want to give customers want they want. We believe Orange is in a position to do this as we have a trusted brand.

Last but by no means least, Peter Ford, Alliances Director, EMEA, ATG was under the spotlight. Peter, like the previous speakers, was very articulate with his answers. He was probably the most vocal (and to the point) of the 3 but perhaps that’s because Peter doesn’t work for an Operator. He came across as a very honest guy, so I’m confident he wasn’t there to agree with his peers for the sake of it.

Peter was also focused on the user experience. I don’t think I’ve been to an event where the customer is centre of attention for everyone. Is the customer at the centre of attention in reality though?

One of Peter’s comments which stuck out in my mind was

I don’t want to watch TV on my phone, I just want to do simple things.

This is almost ironic as Ken Blakeslee demonstrated to Adrian McMahon how he accesses his sky box using a pair of glasses and a mobile phone.

I’m sure there are lots of people who don’t want to do anything other than make voice calls. However, there’s huge chunks of revenue to be gained through data and users do consume massive amounts of it through music and video downloads, amongst other services.

Amongst the audience was Jeremy Flynn, CEO, D2SEE. Jeremy was vocal throughout the evening making some excellent comments and raising tough questions. One of Jeremy’s points was

Standards and standardisation are two different things. I don’t care about standards as long as we have access to standardised APIs. At present [company x] makes it virtually impossible for us to provide content to their customers. They don’t provide standardised APIs and their age verification system is virtually impossible to work with.

We need all Operators to work together.

There were other members of the audience asking plenty of questions but as I’ve said, I can only provide a few sound bites.

The networking afterwards was relaxed and informal. Hooking up with pal and veteran mobile expert Ken Blakeslee from WebMobility, was of course great. Ken never ceases to amaze me with the gadgets he pulls out of his pocket. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the rest of the attendees and hope to see them at future events.

You can see all the photographs on Flickr.

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BIMA Dialog – The Operator’s walled garden

Yet another great networking event in London. I’ll be at this one so drop me a note if you’re going and would like to have a gossip. Register now!

The walled Garden …will mobile operators’ walls tumble in 2007 (or do they know something the rest of us don’t)?

Join BIMA’s expert panellists’ debate about how mobile operators continue to have a walled garden. Is there potential disruption of the apple iPhone as an apple walled garden experience? What attitudes surround consuming operator content versus premium content providers versus portals provided by the manufacturers themselves? What is the impact of premium content consumption on operator branded handsets versus vanilla handsets?

Even though there are opportunities for advertisers to subsidise content why is it not mainstream? Are there threats to premium content providers playing alongside operators with triple play and quad play offerings – sharing and consuming content over integrated web and mobile offerings? What will the impact on broadcasters entering the mobile space really look like?

Date. Tuesday 6th March 2007
Time. Arrive at 5.45 for a 6:15 start
Venue. LBi, 1 Naoroji Street, WC1X 0JD Map
BIMA members: £23.50
Non-members: £39.95

• Steve Wolak, Web Technologies Manager, Vodafone Group R&D – UK
• Andrew McGrath, Director, Design and Usability, Orange Group
• Peter Ford, Alliances Director, EMEA with ATG

After the debate, continue the discussion and network over a glass of wine (or 2, or 3).

Email Janice to book your seat now!

Speaker profiles can be found by clicking through to the full post

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