A browser that delivers a mobile experience as good as, or better than, that on a PC is the current holy grail of the wireless world as operators and enterprises base their futures around open mobile internet access and ‘web 2.0’ techniques such as collaboration. Important progress in smartphone user interfaces has been made recently in products like the Apple iPhone and Nokia media computers, much of this based around deploying widgets and other approaches that ease navigation and speed web-based development.
The prominence of Apple and Nokia in this trend has placed a bright light on the former’s open source browser Safari, on which the two giants have collaborated to create mobile implementations. However, the more traditional specialists in mobile internet are not giving up the battle, and Opera, in particular, sees a chance to cash in on the relative weakness of Windows Mobile in this area – weakness that could well force Microsoft to break the habit of a lifetime and actively support non-IE browsers, in order not to lose ground in its bitter battle for mobile market share.
Opera is about to release version 9 of its Opera Mobile product, easily leapfrogging the outdated Internet Explorer Mobile and the Firefox open source project minimo. Although full details of Mobile 9 are not yet released, the cornerstones will be those mainstays of the move to a usable mobile internet, widgets and ‘intelligent zoom’.
Widgets provide easily recallable, web-based mini-applications that live outside the browser and offer instant access to dynamic content such as news updates. They can also be easily mixed and matched to create new applications and services. Intelligent zoom has been pioneered on the Nintendo Wii, which features Opera as its default browser, and allows users to home in on any area of the web page (a feature also now offered on the Apple iPhone and planned on Nokia models as part of mobile Safari).
Ever since Opera did a U-turn on Windows in 2004 and gave up its stance that it would never develop for the Microsoft OS, it has been looking for a chance to grab mobile market share by appealing to users and operators frustrated with the limitations of cutdown IE. Now, Opera Mobile 9 may give it the opportunity, putting such clear water between the product and its rivals as to make it essential for Microsoft to support it. The alternative will be to put out Windows Mobile phones with last generation mobile internet capabilities – which would increasingly be a serious stumbling block for operators – or turn to Safari, which would mean working with archrivals Nokia and Apple.
Some of the first Windows Mobile 6.0 models to reach the shelves will include Opera alongside IE, including new Motorola Q devices as well as phones from HTC, Asus and Toshiba. Such deals will be important if Opera is to retain its presence in the mobile world without much help from Nokia, which has used the Norwegian company’s browser extensively in the past but is now increasingly focused on its own platform, though it will use the free version of mobile Opera, called Mini, on some of its midrange Java phones.
Certainly, the two Scandinavian firms and Apple are now in the mobile browser hotseat, with IE lagging badly and the open source Mozilla-backed minimo, which has gained very little traction despite the success of its full-sized brother Firefox.
Also fighting to keep its place in the mobile internet world is Openwave, the original cellphone browser firm, which gained massive market share in the age of WAP but is now struggling against the bigger projects. To help with its bid for prominence, the company has acquired the UK’s WiderWeb, a mobile web software developer, for $5m in cash and a further potential $4m if the company achieves certain levels of sales or profitability.
Combining Wider-Web with Openwave will offer an open browsing product that reformats web content for cellphones, something Opera also promises. Peter Galvin, senior vice president of products and marketing at Openwave, said: ‘The content reformatting technology from WiderWeb can dramatically improve the user experience when accessing internet content on mass market mobile devices.’ For Openwave, this is the signal that it will finally move into the business of harmonizing desktop and cellular internet platforms and experience, rather than arguing that the peculiar features of the mobile device require a separate system for decent performance – the thesis behind WAP, in which Openwave was a key pioneer.
Currently, its main business is in selling WAP software to phonemakers and WAP gateways to carriers, but now it is looking to move, along with its formerly closed-garden customers, to the open internet.
Openwave will hope its new move will boost flagging investor confidence – its stock is down 60% on a year ago and even a stock buyback of up to $100 million through 2007 has done little to help . The shareholders may be more encouraged, at least in the short term, by its recently signed strategic relationship with mobile advertising company JumpTap, since this has resulted in a real world trial of converged services with Telefonica Moviles in Spain – whereas the WiderWeb deal is not expected to impact financial performance materially during this year.
A boost to financial fortunes is urgently needed. Last year, Openwave acquired Musiwave, maker of software and content management tools for operators to manage mobile music, taking it into a new and voguish market. However, Musiwave has generated lower revenues than expected and in the third quarter of 2007 Openwave reported a $24.5m loss on revenues down from $103m to $91.4m year-on-year.
Last month, Openwave reported revenue of $84m in its second quarter of 2007 compared with $104m in the year-ago period, with a net loss of $15.8m compared with net income of $8.4m a year earlier. Moving from WAP to open internet will not, alone, be enough to reassure investors in the face of this downslide. However, it is pushing some other hot buttons, notably personalization of mobile content, services and interface, a mantra preached by several operators and by technologists like Qualcomm with its UIone platform, Yahoo with the new Go Mobile interface, and Nokia with Series 60.
Operators, particularly in Europe, are keen to improve their differentiation and subscriber satisfaction by making more individual choices available, for content and how it is presented.
Openwave’s deal with JumpTap focuses on this on the ad selection and delivery front, but its primary activity surrounds its Openwave Personalization and Profiling System (OPPS), which includes data collection, segmentation and profile generation and a subscriber profile that can be used by applications and recommendation engines in a network. OPPS lets operators customize a subscriber experience based on his or her previous activity, as well as individual demographic and subscription information. It includes a ‘contextual merchandising’ capability, which can be used by JumpTap’s advertising platform to deliver targeted information from brands and agencies to mobile subscribers. Two partners so far support OPPS – enterprise infrastructure software company Autonomy and data integration specialist Informatica, but Openwave will now be looking out for cellco and handset deals, seeking to leverage its WAP presence in the bulk of the world’s mobile phones, and its new, more progressive approach to open browsing.