Gartner has predicted that Money transfer applications, Location based services and mobile search will be amongst the top 5 mobile application categories by 2012. The predictions are basis the revenue projections, loyalty and business model, consumer value and estimated market size and penetration of each of these application categories. Consumer mobile applications and services will no longer the prerogative of mobile carriers. The increasing consumer interest in smart-phones, the participation of Internet players in the mobile space, and the emergence of application stores and cross-industry services are reducing the dominance of mobile carriers. Each player will influence how the application is delivered and experienced by consumers, who ultimately vote with their attention and spending power.

A few inferences that can be drawn about the mobile applications perspective: The Importance of the eco-system approach to develop and deploy applications and the emergence of MVNAs (Content aggregators) and MVNEs (Content Enablers)!

Gartner also predicts customers will use no more than 5 mobile applications, which would be chosen according to their needs and demands. There will be opportunities from niche market apps as well.

1.Money transfer ranks No. 1 on Gartner’s 2012 biggest applications list, contending the service’s lower costs, speed and overall convenience boast strong appeal to users in developing markets.
2.Gartner believes the LBS user base will grow from 96 million worldwide in 2009 to 526 million in 2012, crediting its ability to meet a range of needs spanning from productivity and goal fulfillment to social networking and entertainment
3.Mobile search, is listed third due to its dramatic impact on technology innovation and industry revenue.
4.Mobile browsing–according to Gartner, browsers will be available on about 80 percent of handsets shipping in 2012, compared to 60 percent of devices in 2009.
5.Mobile health monitoring is fifth, followed in descending order by mobile payment, NFC, mobile advertising, instant messaging and mobile music.

Reference:

http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/story/gartner-forecasts-money-transfer-lbs-dominate-2012/2009-11-19?utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss&cmp-id=OTC-RSS-FMC0#ixzz0XNk6RLTP

I love my BlackBerry!

BlackBerry or CrackBerry? Top 10 reasons I love my BlackBerry handheld device:

10) I can blog just about anywhere!

9) Applications from facebook to iHeartRadio to games with more being developed every day.

8– Multimedia player is great for MP3s, or watch movies and videos during down time.

7) Google SMS! Weather, news, sports, business directory all from a quick text message query.

6) Web browsing for business or fun is simple.

5) Calendar keeps me on schedule. Address book has my whole database. Tasks too. All synch with my desktop PC.

4) Text messaging. I was hooked before BlackBerry had voice capability.

3) AutoText is the best! Simplifies typing–which is already fast–and can be customized to my style of speech and phrasing.

2) Email in my pocket! (Corporate email, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, etc.)

1) BTW, it’s a phone!

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Dean Crandall is a licensed REALTOR with Keller Williams Westfield Real Estate based in beautiful Utah County. He has six successful years of helping clients and friends find and sell homes, land and investment properties.

If you are looking for free advice or have questions, please contact Dean directly:

Dean Crandall
801-836-3112

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YsGuy.com & DeanoDean, Inc. make no representations as to accuracy, completeness, correctness, current-ness, suitability, or validity of any information on this blog and will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information or for any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use; including, but not limited to, methane gases, body odor, computer and keyboard rage, and sleepless nights. All blog posts are the constantly changing opinions of the author(s) and may occasionally contain bad opinions. They are not approved to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Please make decisions based on advice of competent, licensed professionals.

Copyright® 2009, DeanoDean, Inc. “BlackBerry or CrackBerry? Top 10 Reasons I Love Mine”

“Coming very soon: The next generation in mobile browsing”

Com estas palavras e uma imagem na forma de um quebra-cabeça, a empresa OPERA anunciava em sua página ‘teaser’ - opera.com/next/ , algum lançamento que iria revolucionar a maneira de navegar na internet através de aparelhos móveis (celular; pda/handheld; smartphones). Especulava-se que seria lançado o novo OperaMini 5 ou o Opera Mobile 9.7 para Symbian.

A Opera utilizou da mesma estratégia de marketing na campanha do lançamento do “Opera Unite”. 5 dias antes do lançamento, e empresa publicou: “On June 16th at 9 AM (CET) we will reinvent the Web” (Em 16 de Junho as 09h00 nós iremos reinventar a Web).

E o lançamento da Opera foi exatamente como o do Opera Unite. 5 dias antes do lançamento oficial, a empresa fez a campanha de Marketing e em 16 de Setembro lançou o OperaMini 5!

A nova versão Mini 5 do Opera tem por objetivo facilitar a navegação na web, com discagem acelerada, abas e um gerenciador de senhas.

A grande novidade do novo navegador móvel é a operação por tabs, que permite o acesso a diversas páginas ao mesmo tempo.

A idéia aqui é fazer uma versão semelhante à do desktop. Como sempre, a Opera sai na frente na corrida, agora dos navegadores móveis.

Além disso, segundo a companhia norueguesa, o browser ganhou um banco de memória virtual que salva suas senhas de forma segura. A função Speed Dial da versão atualizada exibe os sites favoritos do usuário assim que o browser é acionado.

O navegador pode ser utilizado em aparelhos com tela sensível ao toque ou naqueles que operam apenas pelo teclado. Segundo a companhia, mais de 30 milhões de pessoas em todo o mundo utilizam versões dos browsers da Opera.

Para baixar o Opera Mini 5 beta, clique AQUI. Pelo seu celular, acesse o endereço http://m.opera.com/next.

Didn’t find what you’re looking for in the tech world? heard some tech rumours that you would like to know more about? this is the place to go. Whether it be mobile content & services trends or plain old tech gossip, Mobinttechno fills you in on the upcoming latest & finest. A thumbs up for my lifelong friend & fellow brainstormer Abdelhamid (Meedo) Abdella.

Between Virtuoso and Mobinttechno, you are guaranteed to be informed, entertained and even allowed to brag to your friends on sizzlin’ hot tech stuff, because if you read it from us, you read it first!

Be sure to come back to us for more splashes from the big raging tech wave.

And remember, with all the virtuality and digitality spinning around us, keep your reality in check.

Rey

Looking out over the horizon of geekery, I see two very compelling trends on a potential collision course. Where and when they collide could make for some very interesting consequences. One is the trend toward developing Web sites for mobile devices, and the other is the mobile device technology itself.

A train leaves L.A. bound for Chicago…
Ask any Web developer today about the industry’s most exciting emerging trend, and they will tell you that it’s Web design for mobile devices. I’ve read that as much as 80% of our Web surfing will be done on mobile devices by the year 2011. So, the Web consultants tell us, companies simply must be designing their sites with mobile compatibility in mind. This means either having a mirrored microsite readable by mobile users, or building your site altogether with mobile browsing in mind. Perhaps they’re right. Today.

…another leaves Chicago bound for Las Vegas…
You don’t have to be a technology nerd to see what’s happening to mobile phones. The iPhone completely reshaped the mobile device paradigm. Now competitors have followed suit, from the Blackberry Storm to the forthcoming Palm Pre. With the mobile Safari browser on the iPhone, viewing a Web page on my phone is no different than viewing it on a computer, at least from an aesthetic standpoint. And with bandwidth and phones’ processor speeds improving virtually everyday, download times are shorter and shorter and more closely resemble that which we’re used to on our desktops and laptops.

As a result, when I visit a Web site on an iPhone, and am automatically redirected to the mobile version of the site by a browser detector, I grouse. I don’t need the graphics-poor, content-weak, quickly loading text version of the site. I want the graphics-rich, robust version of the site that I intended to visit and that my phone supports fully.

…where will they meet? And when?
Maybe it wont’ happen by 2011, but when the majority of us (or many of us business users) are on smart devices that render graphics and Web pages quickly and richly, why will we need the mobile Web pages many are urging us towards today? To go further, will others be like me and be turned off and disappointed by the redirect? Sure, even today’s most advanced smart phones are weak when it comes to supporting Flash, Java and other widgetry. But do you have any doubt that this is coming? And soon?

Maybe we should be designing for the reality as it is today, pre-proliferation of genius phones; or maybe we’re simply getting ahead of ourselves.

Switching metaphors…
If this were a race, I’d say that the technology is in the lead, and mobile Web design is lagging behind. The technology is moving and evolving so quickly, and with the adoption rate of mobile Web site development still so slow (at least at the corporate level), this fight may be called before the sixth round. (Hey! A new metaphor!)

Anyway, something to think about, and follow. At least if you’re into the horizon of geekery.

The fact that more and more people around the globe are using the mobile web every day only gives one a nominal or quantitative view of how rapidly and efficiently it is actually developing.  To find out more, one has to look at how people are browsing the mobile web.  Only several years ago, in fact, mobile browsing was basically akin to searching the web as a text document.  It simply did not have the capability it now does to provide the visual stimulation and interaction we so crave.  One can now basically do, see and experience everything they could on a laptop or desktop right from the palm of their hand (of course there is far less memory and space on mobile devices).

 Due to the efforts of .mobi and the development of these numerous mobile web browsers, many designers have taken upon the challenge to focus on mobile design and make this particular platform a more appealing and capable place for users.  In fact, mobile design is quickly becoming one of the hottest career choices in the field today.  Not only are there opportunities in mobile site design but especially in mobile application design.  Think about how much money Apple has made off just the Iphone Application Store alone.

A majority of top companies and brands already offer .mobi sites such as espn.mobi, live.mobi, NBA.mobi and Nokia.mobi.  Of course, google.mobi and yahoo.mobi are among the leaders along with Wikipedia’s wapedia.mobi and businessweek.mobi ranking highly, as well.  Though many people consider Yahoo’s mobile platform to be superior in functionality to that of Google’s Android, Google still dominates the market with a 62% reach on the mobile world (Yahoo is at 30%).

In the fall of 2006 a new top-level domain name was made available to the public called dotmobi.  This extension tailors itself to delivering a connection to the Internet through mobile devices such as smartphones, PDA’s and other handheld devices.  One might ask what the need is for an entire new extension when pre-existing ones like .com, .net and .org could readily accommodate requirements for mobile browsing.  The answer is that they simply do not do so.
The mobile technology industry is growing at an exponential rate right now.  With an estimated 4.1 billion mobile subscribers throughout the world, the fastest growing segment surprisingly being those living in developing countries, it becomes clear that mobile has become the new medium of choice.  In the fast-paced, multi-tasked, speed and efficiency-enamored society we live in today, the embracement of the mobile medium was inevitable.  It just took technology time to catch up.
One way it did so was through the development of mobile or “mini-browsers” such as Opera Mini, Internet Explorer Mobile and Google’s Android browser.  These platforms optimize the Web for viewing on small, portable devices and are becoming increasingly more capable and powerful.  At first they were, at best, dialed-down web browsers with limited capability (all they could process was basic HTML, WAP 2.0 and WML code) but now some of the newer microbrowsers can accommodate a variety of new coding technologies such as CSS, Ajax and Javascript.  This all makes for a more involving mobile browsing experience in addition to closing the gap between itself and traditional computer browsing.
Take Opera Mini, for example, which has become one of the most popular mobile browsers.  In January 2009 alone, they have already seen a 12.1% increase in usage from the previous month which is up to 20 million users.  They also had an 18.3% increase in total page views during that same span with 7.6 billion pages.  This is enormous growth for a market especially in a downturn economy where most everything else is seeing significant decline.

The number of mobile device users accessing the Internet in the US at least once a month has risen 71 percent in the last year, with a total audience of nearly 63.2 million, comScore reports. Weekly and daily usage is also up 87 and 107 percent to 19.3 and 22.4 million respectively.

No doubt, the rise of the iPhone which in turn spurred competitors to better their own mobile Internet offerings has helped accelerate mobile Internet usage. The mobile web today is ten times better — and more usable — that what has been offered in the past.

What are people looking at? Increasingly its their social networking site or blog, as that showed a 427 percent year over year increase to 9.3 million daily unique users. General news and information was checked by 22.3 million daily, and entertainment news was also popular, seen by 5.5 million daily.

So let’s do a mini-survey of Technologizer users. How often are you using the mobile web? What are the three most common types of things you’re looking at?

The GSMA and a task force comprising Telefónica, Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile International and 3, today unveiled the results of a feasibility study examining mobile audience metrics that will enable media and advertising agencies, brands and publishers to deliver better mobile advertising campaigns. The study, part of the GSMA’s Mobile Media Metrics programme, has created a measurement process for mobile browsing that respects the privacy of mobile users and provides rich planning information for the media and advertising communities.
“Access to transparent measurement is essential in establishing mobile as a legitimate advertising medium. This programme will help take the guesswork out of mobile for brands, publishers and agencies,” said Rob Conway, CEO and Board Member of the GSMA. “For the first time, the advertising community has access to real, aggregated mobile audience data, which offers insight into the most popular sites, ranked by number of visitors, page impressions, time and duration of visits. This will enable better planning of marketing campaigns, and in turn, will accelerate sales of mobile advertising inventory.”
Top Sites
The results of the study, based on a sample of anonymised data from UK mobile operators, reveal that operator sites continue to command the largest audiences, with 68% of UK mobile users visiting operator portals. Google is the top off-portal destination and Facebook is the top mobile site by time spent browsing, with other social networking sites featuring strongly. In addition to the top sites, a total of 167,648 mobile Internet sites have been measured during the feasibility study.

Top Mobile Sites vs. Top Internet Sites, December 2008 UK Mobile Phone Users (sample of UK Operators) and UK Internet Users*

User Behaviour
The output of the GSMA’s Mobile Media Metrics programme will allow brands, publishers and agencies access to rich, aggregated user behaviour data, enabling comparison with other media. For example, mobile users accessing Facebook spend an average of 24 minutes per day on the site, similar to the 27.5 minutes spent by PC users. Mobile users on Facebook averaged 3.3 visits per day versus 2.3 visits per day by PC users.
Mobile is used consistently throughout the whole day, but the early morning (7-10am) is the key day part for mobile, accounting for 22% of total mobile minutes browsed, compared with only 11% of total minutes browsed by PC Internet users in the same day part. Mobile can therefore act as an extension to media such as the Internet and TV, while it reinforces other early morning media, such as radio and newspapers.
Demographics
The real value comes in the combination of aggregated site popularity and user behaviour data with independently collected demographic information, which enables more effective targeting of campaigns. Mobile is confirmed as a strong youth medium with 48 per cent of users between 18-34 years old, compared to 40 per cent for the fixed Internet and 29 per cent for the TV audience (source: BMRB’s TGI). Mobile is also more skewed towards men, who represent 63 per cent of total users compared with 53 per cent for the fixed Internet.
“The mobile phone has the potential to offer relevant, personalised advertising on a level that has largely been unattainable until now,” said Conway. “This potential can only be achieved if mobile is part of a sophisticated, integrated approach to advertising. The rich data delivered through this programme will enable advertisers to create truly comprehensive, cross-platform media plan and campaigns.”
In the feasibility study, the GSMA worked with comScore as its measurement partner and ABC Electronic its media audit partner, as well as key industry stakeholders including JICWEBS and its member associations. The next phase of the programme will see the commercial launch of an audited mobile measurement service, expected in the second half of 2009. The GSMA will establish three further working groups, one each for advertisers, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. These working groups will confirm the measurement and reporting needs of the media industry, gather support for the proposed measures as a ‘common currency’ for mobile audience measurement, and establish how best to integrate this valuable information into existing cross-media business processes and tools.
Supporting quotes:
“Establishing a common system for mobile advertising will make it as easy for advertisers to run campaigns on mobiles as it is across traditional media such as television and radio. This marks a significant step forward in driving the credibility of mobile advertising,” said Tanya Field, Director – Mobile Data Group, Telefónica S.A.
“Mobile Media Metrics is vital to the development of Mobile Advertising industry,” said Frank Boulben, Director Commercial Strategy at Vodafone Group. “The GSMA has supported a solution which can be deployed by mobile operators in virtually every country and is based on ongoing collaboration with the leading advertisers and advertising agencies.”

“Mobile advertising is an innovative channel with solid future potential in terms of reach, targeting and message relevance. One of the key building blocks for the successful take-up of mobile advertising is a standardised measurement system for mobile media audiences allowing advertisers to make informed decisions on the ROI of their campaigns. The GSMA initiative will play a vital role in bringing all the necessary elements together to ensure an effective mobile audience measurement process is put in place,” said Ingo Schneider, Vice President Multimedia, T-Mobile International.
“We’re now in an era of less hype and more reality when it comes to mobile advertising. This Mobile Media Metrics initiative is a big step forward in making mobile advertising simpler to plan, buy, execute and measure. It will provide a clearer picture of the usage of mobile as a medium for the advertising industry and as brands invest more in mobile, it will help us to pass on even greater benefits to customers, such as choice, quality and ad-funded services,” said Steve Heald, Sales Director, Partner Channels, Orange UK.
“Network operators have long sought the independent verification which will allow them to monetise mobile Internet usage on their networks. Media buyers have also been excited about mobile for years, but have never had access to the independent statistics to justify large ad spend; hopefully Mobile Media Metrics will change all this. 3 is very excited about the opportunity provided by this initiative and we look forward to helping media buyers generate a higher ROI through the use of mobile advertising,” said Neil Andrews, Head of Portal Advertising at 3 UK. “Robust audience data is vital to the success of any medium, and Mobile Media Metrics represents a huge step forward for the industry. Once media planners start using the research to justify mobile advertising on schedules, we can expect to see the medium grow with well targeted cross-network campaigns” said Guy Philippson, CEO of IAB UK. “ABCe is looking forward to working with the mobile industry to progress and ultimately deliver mobile measurement to the standards agreed by JICWEBS (The Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards in the UK and Ireland). Media planners, owners and buyers require trusted and transparent data to justify driving media budgets to mobile,” said Richard Foan, MD of ABC Electronic.

Maybe I did lost my mojo for writing. I got the term from Manz of GritFX blog, who left a comment on my previous post. Mojo for Writing. Is there such thing?

It is true that I cannot write something interesting or creative these past few weeks. I got my body weakening when I am starting to type something with the keyboard. Even when I feel awake, my eyes would suddenly starts to feel sleepy. Even during the middle of the day. Even at this moment while I type this post, my eyes is getting heavy.

I kept thinking that maybe a laptop would help me put into words those ideas coming on my head during the time I am attending our family business. Or maybe I can blog hop during those times. I have the thought of that over and over again for it is like a nice lifestyle. I wanted to take my desktop PC instead but the space won’t be able to manage this.

Then again, I just realize few days ago that I have my mobile phone to do that. Yep! If some of you remember, I purchased an expensive phone last year that would be able to accommodate web surfing with wifi. Well, that time I bought this, it is the one of the best mobile, which makes it expensive, now, it half the price on black market.

Anyway, for 5 days, I have been just watching continues series of episodes from youtube. Luckily my mobile can play those videos, but the phone heats very fast. So, I decided to try using a plugin that would make my blog compatible for mobile web browsing use. I hope to install and easily learn the use of it by the end of this week. With this, I may be able to write post even when I am on idle from our business.

It also gives me a wide point of view that we should let bloggers be able to learn making their blogs compatible for mobile web browsing. Especially those who are try earning money from their blogs. I am sure that in just couple of years from now, many will be doing mobile browsing. I want to make sure that when that time comes, I am ready for that market, just like famous sites that gives various services today.

If you heard about Web 2.0, well I think what I have in mind is a part of Web 3.0. Being able to have the knowledge of developing a website compatible for all types of browsing, from computer to the mobile phones, would really help my skills as a web developer. I am going to make sure that this is one service I can provide on the web developing company I plan to have. So cross fingers, He he he

mobile Embryo – An easy to read mobile browser specific set of selected introductory pages to embryology. Includes: time line of human development, movies, images, diagnostic testing, glossary, lecture slides and audio links.

http://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/mobile/embryo.html

Gray’s Anatomy images – Test site for cataloging a large image database set. These historic images are a useful resource for general anatomy education purposes.

http://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/mobile/GraysImage/index.html

From the Mobile Content & Marketing Expo

San Jose, CA–Skyfire CEO/co-founder Nitin Bhandari gave the conference’s last keynote address, on the future of mobile browsing. From his position at the head of Skyfire, a free, downloadable mobile web browser designed to make the mobile Internet experience identical to that on the PC, Bhandari identified what he called “mobile web megatrends.”

Nitin Bhandari

Is good mobile web browsing an oxymoron (with the exception of iPhone)? That’s the issue that got Bhandari motivated to create Skyfire. If you look at what has happened in the industry in the last few years, things have changed, he said. Three years ago, 45 seconds into a page load, your browser would crash. Two years ago, Nokia brought the webkit-based Minimap to market, highlighting the potential of full web on mobile. It was a phenomenon and a great credit to Nokia,” he said. One year ago, iPhone delivered on the promise of the mobile browser. Eighty percent of iPhone owners browse the web on a regular basis, he reported, and that’s an amazing statistic. “For the first time, the web browser is front and center,” he said.

Now, there’s a great deal of innovation in mobile browsers and the ease of mobile browsing has become a decision-making factor for consumers shopping for a mobile phone. Going back to the evolution, Bhandari pointed to WAP sites, with extremely limited experiences, no CSS or Javascript support, and proprietary markup languages. “Pages link to other pages on the Internet, and you didn’t get that here,” he said.

The mobile web was more, with HTML, and the user could accomplish transactions, such as getting scores on the ESPN site. The full web provides PC websites with HTML and Javascript, but no plug-in support. The concept of the PC web gives full PC website support with full plug-in support, including Flash, Quicktime, Real, WMF and Silverlight. “That’s the cusp we’re on now, moving to the PC web,” said Bhandari. He showed a chart of what products look like with PC web browsing.

Chart of content on devices

“Better browsing is a disruptive force,” he said. “If you look at the entire lifecycle of creating, distributing, measuring and profiting. It has a profound impact on all of those” First, creating an app can be done two ways: looking for reach to many devices with limited engagement, or lots of engagement but to a limited range of devices. “This is no secret that the mobile world is highly fragmented,” he said. “Very quickly, you’re talking about millions of dollars.” The second way is to write a web app. “Flash is coming to all these mobile devices,” he said. “We have our way to bring it, and Adobe is working on their way. Then what you’ve created is leveraged across the PC and the mobile device. We believe everything is going to writing for the web. Write it once and run it everywhere.”

Discovery is better on the web, which levels the playing field, said Bhandari. The traditional model would focus on a biz dev team and staying on the deck, whereas open web search provides an effective marketing tool and advertising to acquire users is efficient. “It’s not mobile web, it’s mobile access to the web and there’s only one web,” he continued. “Yes, the screen is small and you might have to do something to optimize for the screen, but it’s still just one web.”

Do users prefer the mobile web or the full PC web? The jury is out, said Bhandari, although he admitted that he’s prejudiced. “Skyfire data says the full web,” he noted. “They can zoom, scroll and interact with the content. How many people will justify a mobile web budget? Very few people, so the concept of one web is great from the point of view of budget. Mobile web won’t just go away. The 90/10 rule applies: the massive amount of engagement will come from the top 10 percent of the devices, which are definitely becoming very capable.”

Widgets are another disruption. They moved to the web, but people began to question that. “If you add one more layer of fragmentation, it’s too much,” he said, “People are saying, why build a custom widget If I super-impose something else and it only reaches 4 percent of the market, why do it? Why not just build widgets as you do on the PC, with iGoogle, Netvibes or Facebook, which are all based on web standards?” Widget + Web = the best of push-pull experience, added Bhandari.

Bhandari stated that the definitions of content licensing will change. Once you’ve created a killer application, you need analytics, he added, and analytics are going to change. “Server-side analytics was a stop-gap, but now we support Javascript and AJAX,” he said. “We still need to know the device and carrier mapping, and we need to track new things like zooming and hotspots.”

Finally, advertising will change, into the model Bhandari called “OneAd.” “It will all start to converge, there’s no reason in the future for them to be silo-ed,” he said. “Mobile inventory isn’t unique because of LBS (location-based services). No, it also happens on the PC. That’s a myth that location makes mobile advertising different. There’s a myth that there are different ad units that work on a mobile screen. True, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There will be a convergence in terms of creativity and technology. Is mobile inventory unique because of downloads? Perhaps, because of different download files, but maybe not, because download files are different between Mac and PC, and no reason why it couldn’t be extended to mobile.”

He stressed that he doesn’t mean that the same ad will work on mobile and the PC, and talked about some of the things that don’t make sense on both platforms. “Rich advertising – if all units are treated as one, they can have interactive banners, pre-rolls, post-rolls,” he said. “It’s in everybody’s best interest to converge these. If people are going to access web content through the phone, we need a new “zoom unit,” vector graphics or what have you, so the ad is legible is you zoom in or out. But there’s no reason why we as an industry can merge into one ad inventory system.”

The formula for profit: profit is in direct proportional to clicking intensity. Click intensity is related to page load speed and directly proportional to content support, including plug-ins. The user experience is nebulous but very important. “There’s a reason why people would rather use iPhone than…fill in the blank,” he said.

“Better mobile browsers are here and we can all profit from it,” he said. “The key is too much fragmentation makes it too expensive to do anything and no one makes any money. The more we bridge the gap between the PC and mobile world, the more we have the chance to make money.”

Back in February, the Norwegian Web wizards at Opera previewed a new version of Opera Mobile at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona. It looked like it might be the phone browser that folks who don’t own iPhones have been waiting for. The company promised a public beta, but its timetable slipped so much and so frequently that I decided to stop being excited about it until it showed up.

That day is here–Opera has released a free public beta of the browser. The beta is still a very rough draft of the product that Opera touted back in February–it’s for Windows Mobile only (a Symbian version is also in the works), and lacks important features such as Flash support. I encountered bugs, such as the way the browser insisted on popping up an onscreen keyboard for URL entry even though the Tilt has a real keyboard.

Opera says that the beta is 2.5 times faster than Pocket Internet Explorer, the antique that’s the default browser on Windows Mobile devices; I haven’t done any formal speed tests, but on my 3G AT&T Tilt, pages rendered into place bit by bit in a way that usually didn’t feel anywhere near as zippy as Safari on the new iPhone 3G.

Opera Mobile 9.5 is, in other words, a true beta that doesn’t claim to be entirely ready for prime time. It’s a promising one, though, and anyone who’s serious about Web browsing on a Windows Mobile device and isn’t intimidated by beta code should give it a try.

Like Safari on the iPhone and Opera’s Java-based Opera Mini)–and unlike Pocket Internet Explorer–Opera Mobile now uses zoom-in/zoom-out navigation: When you land on a new page, the browser squeezes as much as possible on the screen, rendering the formatting much as it would appear in a desktop browser. You then tap to zoom, and can pan around the page. (You don’t get the multi-touch, fingertip precision that the iPhone provides, but bopping around a page using the Tilt’s stylus or my finger worked quite well.)

Here’s CNN in zoom-out and zoom-in view:

On my AT&T Tilt, I instantly found that the biggest issue was not the browser itself but the available screen real estate. Like most Windows Mobile phones, the Tilt has a 240-by-320 pixel screen, with half the pixels of the iPhone’s 320-by-480 model. That’s just not enough to make the zoom-out/zoom-in browsing experience nearly as intuitive and practical as it is on the iPhone.

For instance, here’s Gmail as it looks when I load it into Opera Mobile. Except for the Gmail logo itself, all the text’s too small to read–there just aren’t enough pixels to render characters in legible form:

But when I zoom into a more legible view, I don’t see enough of the page to let me make much sense of my inbox:

I ended up using Gmail’s mobile view (m.gmail.com), which is designed to work well in browsers with limited screen real estate. (I found, incidentally, that Opera Mobile always loaded the desktop version of sites I went to, even when there was a phone-optimized one; the iPhone’s Safari automatically loaded phone versions of Gmail, MSNBC.com, and other sites.)

Opera Mobile still offers a “Mobile View” that converts Web pages into long, skinny columns that wrap text to fit onto the phone’s screen. It’s an crude, old-fashioned tactic that’s reminiscent of Pocket Internet Explorer…and for some sites, it’s more practical than zoom-in, zoom-out. As far as I can tell, you can only get to it through a Settings option; I wish there was a quick way to turn it on or off for the particular page you’re on.

On the plus side, Opera is smart enough to go into a full-screen mode whenever you don’t need toolbars or menu items, thereby using every available pixel to render the Web page. Here, for instance, is a comparison of the New York Times homepage on Opera Mobile 9.5 on the Tilt (top) and Safari on the iPhone (bottom). The iPhone does have more pixels to play with, but since it uses some of them to display your phone carrier, signal strength, the current time, Bluetooth and battery status, the URL, and icons for search, refresh, bookmarks, tabs, and back/forward navigation, the Times itself doesn’t look radically better.

On Windows Mobile phones, Opera Mobile faces potential stiff competition from Skyfire, a browser that’s also reminiscent of iPhone Safari, and which uses proxy browsing to offer the potential of the most desktop-like, accurate Web experience yet. But Skyfire’s in private beta, and the version I’ve tried has some usability problems that get in the way of its considerable promise. Then there’s Windows Mobile 7–you gotta think that it’s going to come with a version of Internet Explorer that’s much, much better than the current one. But it’s not here yet, and won’t ever run on some current Windows Mobile devices.

The bottom line at the moment? Opera needs to polish up Opera Mobile 9.5 quite a bit before it starts charging for it. (Version 8.65, its predecessor, sells for $24.) Once it’s finished, it won’t outdo iPhone Safari, and can’t until Windows Mobile hardware gets better. But even its current form, it’s a browser which outdoes Pocket Internet Explorer in most respects that matter–and I bet a lot of serious Windows Mobile users will adopt it as their primary browser right now.

According to a Google commissioned survey from Clark, Martire & Bartolomeo,
“Some 44% of people who saw a product or service advertised in a newspaper in the past month researched it – and two-thirds(67%) of that group went online to find more information.”