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Opera Mobile 10 beta for Windows Mobile phones is now available for immediate download on a smartphone near you. This version for Windows Mobile users elevates mobile browsing to a desktop-like experience, helping people to search, socialize and stay connected while on-the-go.
The Opera Mobile 10 beta for Windows Mobile looks and feels similar to the Opera 10 desktop browser and Opera Mini 5 beta. Opera is creating more cohesion between its products by introducing a unified look across many of its platforms. Opera maintains its powerful arsenal of features in this beta, including Speed Dial, tabbed browsing, a password manager and its super, server-side compressor, Opera Turbo."We are unifying our products, so that users get the same experience, no matter the device or which particular Opera browser they are using," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. "With Opera Mobile 10, we are raising the expectations of how a a mobile browser should perform. Today, users require a browser as powerful as the Web, one that can handle their daily tasks as well as their computers. That's Opera."
Mobile web use and app use is growing. Here's a quick summary of fun facts from the Millennial Media October SMART report :
- The U.S. Mobile Web: Grew to 1.1% to 64.8M users, according to Nielsen.
- Apple surpassed Android and RIM in the number of monthly downloads. Android apps out-performed both Apple and RIM in the Game category. RIM topped the average app time at eight minutes.
- Engagement: Average user session time was 4:46 (min:sec) and average page views were 106, down from 109.
- New OS Report: The iPhone operating system was the top OS on the ad network, followed closely by RIM. Apple; however, was bumped back into the second spot behind Samsung, as the top manufacturer on our network. Feature phones represented 64% of impressions versus smartphones, which accounted for 36% of impressions on our network.
Reach:
The U.S. Mobile Web grew to 64.8M users. Millennial Media's unique audience reach increased to 51.7M users, an industry-leading reach of 79.88% of U.S. Mobile internet users.
Special Section - Mobile App Snapshot - provided by Mobclix:
Apple dominated the number of total apps year-to-date through November 1, for a total of 115,000 combined apps in the Games, Entertainment, Books and Utility categories, according to Mobclix. Apple also led Android and RIM with the number of monthly downloads, with 100M apps per month. Android and RIM followed with 20M and 300K respectively. Average in-app CTR's varied by app category -- Android out-performed both Apple and RIM in the Game app category. RIM topped the average app time with eight minutes.
Sony Music with Azuki
Systems will create mobile versions of its artist websites, offering video,
photos, news, and more for the music fan on the go with the Michael Jackson's official website will be the first mobile site to
launch at m.michaeljackson.com. The Michael Jackson mobile website will feature Michael Jackson news, photos and streaming access to classic videos such as "Billie Jean," "Beat It," and the unforgettable "Thriller."
The site allows mobile music fans to experience Michael Jackson's celebrated artistry.
The Michael Jackson mobile website is available at m.michaeljackson.com for Android, BlackBerry Storm, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Palm Pre users. Azuki and Sony will roll out full support for mobile browser handsets by the end of the year.
Sony Music will roll out mobile versions of other artists' websites in the coming months.
Here's good news for those you who follow our BlackBerry Storm and BlackBerry Tour Apps of the Day, the BOLT browser has been popular for BlackBerry smartphones and plain ordinary cell phones from AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile is now out of beta.The BOLT mobile browser was in public beta for eight months and was downloaded more than 2 million times, rendering in excess of 200 million web pages.
They claim that BOLT 1.5, its fastest, most capable mobile browser to date. Many of our readers have reported how much they love the BOLT and it especially appreciated for veiwing YouTube videos. We saw a demo of it at CTIA in April and it was impressive.
BOLT displays full web pages like they do in a computer web browser. In comprehensive speed testing, BOLT was routinely 25 to 50 percent faster than the next fastest mobile browser. With advanced features like the ability to stream video from the most popular video websites, copy and paste, upload files such as photos and videos to websites, and order and arrange favorites into custom folders, BOLT is also the most fully-featured mobile browser.
Built in J2ME and able to operate on phones of all types, BOLT can work on an estimated 3 billion phones already in the market. A version of BOLT created specifically for BlackBerry includes all the features of BOLT but also includes default BlackBerry shortcuts and optimizations.
Built with proprietary compression, navigation and rendering technologies, BOLT enables users to find and read information quickly and easily. Once users have navigated to the specific section of the large Web page they are viewing, they can then zoom in to display clear text and images that look crisp on even small mobile phone screens or low-end phones. Employing the Webkit 4.0 rendering and layout engine, BOLT offers users the most accurate rendering of complex Web pages available on mobile phones.
The new BOLT 1.5 includes all the features in previous beta versions plus important new features and service enhancements to improve reliability, usability and speed.
BOLT's beta feature set included:
- Fast, secure, desktop-style web browsing on both high-end and low-end handsets.
- Streaming video capabilities.
- Split screen and full screen modes for easy navigation and viewing
- Easily add and select favorites and view browsing history
- Intuitive keystroke shortcuts for easier navigation and content selection .
- Protection against spyware and malicious or faulty add-ons
- 23:1 compression uses less data than competing browsers
The digital advertising and publishing market will be growing,
supported by new mobile devices and advances in apps and
technology. A new survey from the Audit Bureau of Circulations reveals
that print publishers are focusing on the mobile market as a prime opportunity
to expand their brands, reach new audiences and generate additional
revenue while offering advertisers the chance to reach locally
targeted, engaged audiences.
According to Yankee Group, 31 percent of phone-owning
consumers now browse the mobile web at least once a month, with news,
search and weather being their most popular destinations.
Yankee group rounded up evaluations that show most mobile sites still fail to
deliver optimal experiences, earning an average score of 52 on a scale
of 1 to 100.
The new report, “Best of the Anywhere Web 2009,”
does show, however, that mobile Web sites are making strides. Four
sites—Google.com, Google.com/m/news, Yahoo.com and MLB.com—earn passing
grades, marking the first time any site has scored above a 70 on Yankee
Group’s Mobile Web Report Card.
“Unlike
last year, most of the sites we reviewed adapt their content to many
differing feature phones and smartphones. And some companies are also
starting to incorporate location-awareness, something other sites
should strive to emulate,” said
Carl Howe, director at Yankee Group and author of the report. Howe will present his findings this week at Mobile Internet World.
In the United States use of Opera Minis is growing rapidly and the top makers of smartphones are BlackBerrry, Samsung and LG (with the feature phone the LG Vu.)
Opera Mini USA Data
- Page-view growth since July 2008: 189.5%
- Unique-user growth since July 2008: 60.8%
- Page-views per user: 239
- Yahoo charged ahead three spots
Top 10 sites in the United States (# of unique users) google.com facebook.com myspace.com yahoo.com wikipedia.org youtube.com my.opera.com cnn.com accuweather.com nytimes.com
Opera Mini Top handsets for July 2009
- BlackBerry 8330 ("Curve")
- Samsung SPH-M800 ("Instinct")
- BlackBerry 9000 ("Bold")
- LG CU920 ("Vu")
- BlackBerry 8310 ("Curve")
- Samsung SPH-M810 ("Instinct S30")
- BlackBerry 8320 ("Curve")
- BlackBerry 8130 ("Pearl")
- BlackBerry 8900 ("Curve 2")
- BlackBerry 9530 ("Storm")
Opera's State of the Mobile Web report for July examines the link between downloads and usage in determining some of the places Opera Mini users might vacation during the summer.
Locations in July where Opera Mini users appear to vacation include Turkmenistan, Antarctica, Aruba, Andorra, Burundi and Australia. In these locations, unique users increased more than the download rate.
"This month's report shows that people are using the mobile Web more intensively, said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera. "We believe that giving people everywhere a better browser will encourage them to browse more. So if we want the Web to be available to everyone, we need a solution that can work on almost every phone. That was why we originally made Opera Mini. And so far, the world has responded. We continue to be humbled by that response."
Dr. Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google, officer of Google, has resigned from Apple's Board of Directors, a position he has held since August 2006.There has been a conflict of interest for Schmidt because well Google products are competing with Apple products and Google Voice was rejected as an iPhone app.
"Eric has been an excellent Board member for Apple, investing his valuable time, talent, passion and wisdom to help make Apple successful," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple's core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric's effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest. Therefore, we have mutually decided that now is the right time for Eric to resign his position on Apple's Board."
Following the new Yahoo! homepage
announced last week, Yahoo! released a new mobile homepage for a seamless Yahoo! experience across PC and mobile
devices.
Yahoo! says
Yahoo! reaches nearly 1 out of every 2 mobile Internet users in the
country - more than 34MM unique users per month*. We provide simple,
open, compelling and feature rich services that allow individuals to
define their Internet experience on mobile.
With the new Yahoo! homepage, people can easily add apps
on the PC - from Yahoo! or virtually any other site on the Web - and
then with a few simple clicks, transport their customized experience to
their mobile device. Additionally, we scan for any changes that you
make across the Yahoo! network on the PC - such as adding a stock to Y!
Finance or an RSS feed to My Yahoo!, and see if you'd like to do the
same to your Yahoo! mobile experience.
The new PC to mobile
sync is available today on more than 400 devices in 17 countries, and
is expected to rollout to additional markets and devices in the near
future.
Opera Mini users viewed more than 10 billion
pages in one month for the first time, according to the State of the Mobile Web report by
Opera. .- In June 2009, Opera Mini had nearly 26.5 million unique consumer users, a 4.2% increase from May 2009 and more than 143% compared to June 2008. These numbers reflect only the Opera Mini users who have specifically chosen to install the browser on their phone.
- Those 26.5 million people viewed more than 10.4 billion pages in June 2009. This means that Opera Mini servers were processing more than 346 million pages per day. Since May, page views have gone up 8.4%. Since June 2008, page views have increased 224%.
- In June 2009, Opera Mini users generated more than 168.4 million MB of data for operators worldwide. Since May, the data consumed went up by 5.6%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed up to 90%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed almost 1.7 PB of data in June. Since June 2008, data traffic is up 236%.
- The top 10 countries for Opera Mini usage this month are (in order): Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, U.S., U.K., Poland, Nigeria.
- In the top 10 list of countries, India continued to move up the rankings overtaking China for third place.
- Nokia phones continue to be the handsets of preference for Opera Mini users, with Sony Ericsson claiming second place. BlackBerry and Samsung phones are the preference in the United States.
- In North America, BlackBerry handsets are the most popular, while Sony Ericsson handsets are the most popular in the Caribbean by a wide margin.
- Google is the number one most visited site in all the countries, with the exception of Costa Rica, where Hi5 takes the number 1 spot.
- Facebook remains the most popular social network in North America, while Hi5 is the most popular social network for mobile phones the Caribbean.
- If every consumer Opera Mini user took a Nokia 6300 (the most popular phone among Opera Mini users) and stacked them vertically, top to bottom, the resulting tower would stretch to the International Space Station and back again...4 times.
- Those same 26.5 million phones would stretch almost halfway around the Earth (.44 the equatorial radius).
- 26.5 million Nokia 6300s outweigh the combined launch weight of a space shuttle with booster rockets and a Boeing 747.
AT&T has added new netbooks that include the Acer Aspire One, the Dell Inspiron Mini 10, and the Lenovo S10.
AT&T will offer the Acer Aspire One throughout stores nationwide. The Dell Inspiron Mini 10 and Lenovo S10 will be available in multiple stores and all devices will be available for purchase soon online at www.att.com and other direct sales channels. The netbooks will cost $199.99 after mail-in rebate via AT&T Promotion Card with a two-year service contract.
The netbooks feature 10-inch screens and weigh less than 3 pounds. The promotional netbook pricing requires the purchase of a two-year AT&T DataConnect plan - including a 200MB plan for $40 per month or a 5GB plan for $60 per month. AT&T DataConnect plans offer consumer and small business subscribers access to the nation's fastest 3G mobile broadband network, along with unlimited use of AT&T Wi-Fi service, featuring more than 20,000 hot spots nationwide.
In studies conducted by the Nielsen Norman Group, researchers found that the average success rate for
users completing tasks on the mobile Internet was 59 percent compared
to an average success rate of 80 percent for websites accessed on a
regular PC. They conclude that it is not easy or pleasant to use the mobile web.
Researchers identified four main obstacles that mobile users face to getting a good user experience (not counting poor cellular service.)
- Small screens: When users see fewer options at any given time, all interactions become harder to do.
- Awkward input: Text entry is particularly slow and error prone, even on phones with mini-keyboards, and it is difficult to operate GUI widgets without a mouse.
- Download delays: Getting to the next screen takes forever, often longer than it would on a dial-up connection.
- Mis-designed websites: Sites optimized for usability under desktop conditions, meaning they don't follow guidelines for mobile access, create all kinds of additional obstacles for mobile users.
dotMobi announced that it has improved its Instant Mobilizer service. Instant Mobilizer automatically creates mobile sites using existing
content from business' PC-based web sites.
Instant Mobilizer now offers a vCard feature that allows site visitors to save a business' phone and address directly into their contacts as well as a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feature that makes RSS feeds on a business' PC-based site accessible via a link on the mobile site.
Launched six months ago, Instant Mobilizer has already seen wide international acceptance by businesses who use it to convert their existing PC-based sites into "mobile ready" ones. The service also led Entrepreneur magazine, in May 2009, to recognize dotMobi as one of the world's 100 brilliant companies. The same month, as part of its annual Net Visionary Awards, the Irish Internet Association honored dotMobi as the year's Mobile Internet Innovator for services like Instant Mobilizer.
"Since its launch, Instant Mobilizer has proven to be popular for a variety of audiences who want to get on the mobile Web but don't know the first step about getting there," said Trey Harvin, CEO of dotMobi. "Since dotMobi's mission includes facilitating the creation of mobile content, we're especially proud that we've been able to offer a service like Instant Mobilizer that does just what it says: instantly makes a Web site mobile. That means small and medium business owners can concentrate on their businesses and not on their Web sites, yet still take advantage of the burgeoning mobile Web audience to increase awareness and sales."
Opera Mobile 9.7 beta is now available for Windows Mobile phones. They claim it accelerates the mobile
browsing experience and uses Opera Turbo. Opera has also
included its newly upgraded browser engine, Opera Presto 2.2,
for faster page loads and better overall performance. Opera Mobile 9.7 beta features a mobile version of Opera Turbo. This turbo-charged technology is made possible by server-accelerated rendering and compression technology. In other words, despite network shortcomings or in the absence of a powerful device, Opera Turbo enables a fast and rich browsing experience that is even faster than the most advanced 3G phones.
Opera's latest rendering engine, Opera Presto 2.2, is under the hood of Opera Mobile 9.7 beta, it helps display web pages on your phone up to 25 percent faster.
According to StatCounter Global Stats, Opera is the world's number one mobile browser, overtaking iPhone in May.
In May Opera took 24.6% of the worldwide market compared to 22.3% for
iPhone. Nokia retains third place with 17.9%. However, if one includes
iPod Touch then Apple browsers still lead with iPod Touch alone taking
14.9% of the market in May.
In March StatCounter launched StatCounter Global Stats, a free online service which captures market share of search engines, browsers and operating systems including mobile.
"Opera began the year in number one slot but iPhone overtook it in February. May saw Opera regain the number one position," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO and founder of StatCounter. "It will be fascinating to watch how this battle plays out over the year."
Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Mobile Browser Market Share
The latest AdMob metrics show smartphones accounted for nearly 3 times more usage than their relative market share in its April 2009 Mobile Metrics Report. The report also compares usage of mobile Web sites to usage of HTML sites on mobile devices, finding that relative usage of both is highest on Apple and Android devices.
Highlights from the April 2009 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report:
- While Gartner estimated global smartphone sales represented 12 percent of total device sales in 2008, 35 percent of AdMob's worldwide ad requests in April 2009 came from smartphones. This means that smartphones accounted for nearly 3 times more usage than their relative market share.
- The iPhone OS had 8 percent of the smartphone market, but generated 43 percent of mobile web requests and 65 percent of HTML usage.
- The Android OS share of the smartphone market was less than 1 percent, but generated 3 percent of mobile Web requests and 9 percent of HTML usage.
- The Symbian OS had 52 percent of the smartphone market, but generated only 36 percent of mobile Web usage and 7 percent of HTML usage.
- ·sage of mobile website greatly out paces usage of HTML sites on smartphones running the Symbian and RIM Operating System (OS).
- 24 percent of US requests were made over a Wi-Fi network. The top five Wi-Fi devices in terms of usage were the iPhone, iPod touch, Sony PSP, HTC Dream (G1), and HTC Dash.
Opera shows a major jump in usage, page views and data transfers for Opera Mini this month. In March 2009, more than 23 million people used Opera Mini, a 12.1% increase from February 2009 and more than 157% increase from March 2008. Those users viewed more than 8.6 billion pages in March 2009. Since February, page views have gone up 17.4%. Year over year (YoY), page views have increased 255%.
The mobile Web is booming in Latin America. From March 2008 to March 2009, overall page views in the top 10 countries listed increased 673%. From March 2008 to March 2009, overall unique users in the top 10 countries listed increased 164%. From March 2008 to March 2009, overall data transferred in the top 10 countries listed increased 510%.
Examining the top sites, Google, Live and Facebook all do well in Latin America. Orkut remains the dominant social network in Brazil and Paraguay. Smaller social-networking sites, such as hi5, are also strong in several Latin American countries.
The mobile Web continues its rapid growth worldwide. For the first time, Opera's State of the Mobile Web profiles page-view and user growth in the top 10 countries. We find triple-digit page-view growth in most countries, with double-digit user increases in all countries. Nigeria is the exception to both as it experienced more than 4,000 percent page-view growth and almost 1,500 percent user growth since March 2008.
Opera Software will include Face Gestures in Opera 10. Opera Face Gestures enable anyone with a Webcam to control their browser moving only their face. Based on the same architecture as Opera’s Mouse Gestures, Face Gestures makes surfing the web as easy as smiling, batting an eye lash or flaring a nostril.
Opera Face Gestures grew out of a collaborative project between Opera and the Norwegian Intelligence Service (NIS) to create the world’s most advanced facial-recognition technology using only JavaScript, HTML and CSS. After more than seven years in development, Opera Face Gestures were born.
“In 2001, we introduced Mouse Gestures in Opera 5.1. At that point we knew we were on to something,” said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera. “We already had keyboard shortcuts in the very first version of Opera, but once we introduced voice control in Opera 8 we had only one input mechanism left—the face. Opera Face Gestures represent the next frontier in browser control.”
Opera Face Gestures include more than 45 controls, from opening new tabs to restoring sessions to navigating through a Web page. Opera Face Gestures are so advanced you can compose and send an entire e-mail message through Opera’s built-in e-mail client. Even Mouse Gestures can be triggered with Opera Face Gestures. To activate Opera Face Gestures simply press the single-key shortcut F8.
Some gestures are eyebrows/heads up for scrolling up and eyebrows head down for scrolling down. Puffing up and blowing the face out zooms in, sucking-in, zooms out. Wagging of a tongue opens speed dial.
Let’s face it, this tech may also come to the opera mini browser, “Are you really smiling at me or are you just browsing on your phone?” friends may ask one day soon in the future. It definitely may raise a few eyebrows.
dotMobi released highlights of a new study on mobile web trends that
shows mobile web content creation continues to explode.Based on a review of the largest top-level Internet domains, dotMobi has seen a sevenfold growth in the number of mobile websites in the past year, proving that a revolution in mobile content availability is at hand.
When dotMobi first performed this study a year ago, 150,000 mobile websites were available. These sites are discovered by mobile-friendly Internet address designations like ".mobi" or "mobile." or "/wap," where mobile-friendly content is likely to reside.
dotMobi now counts approximately 1.1 million mobile site addresses in the world, based on a scan of the largest Top Level Domains (TLDs) in use. The TLDs that were scanned include such domains as .mobi, .com, .net, .uk and .de. The 1.1 million number means that approximately 0.8 percent of all domains are likely to have mobile-friendly content.
As a comparison, the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) in 1998 counted a total of 1.46 million public, PC-based Web sites across all TLDs. Today, VeriSign estimates there are approximately 77.4 million live ".com" and ".net" Web sites. Given the strong growth of the mobile Web in the past year and the rapidly evolving sophistication of mobile technologies, a similar -- or even faster -- long-term deployment of mobile content is likely compared to that of the PC-based Web a decade ago.
Of the 1.1 million global "entry points" used by content creators, the .mobi domain is the preferred entry point for sites that use a single naming convention --- that's to say, sites that use only one domain. (Some sites use multiple naming options for the same site.) The ".mobi" domain is used on 23 percent of these addresses.
