Posts filed under Mobile Web

Back in 2001, Microsoft laid siege to the Web. Thanks to its dominant desktop position, it dominated the browser market with IE6 and ultimately killed off its competitors. The result was years of stagnation, a willful disregard of Web standards, and a Web development environment that actively discouraged any innovation throughout the Noughties.

Today, Apple is doing the same to the mobile Web. Not by a dominant market position, but by a lawsuit for patent infringement that it’s thrown at HTC.

And not just any old lawsuit. If they win, Apple will get a permanent injunction against HTC, which will bar them from importing or selling touchscreen smartphones in the US, along with triple damages and maximum interest for all such smartphones they’ve already sold.

In other words – the end of HTC, the end of Android, and the end of any innovation in the smartphone market.

This is is huge. This has the potential to be more damaging than Microsoft ever thought of being.

Read on for how Apple is threatening the mobile Web in the most aggressive attack yet made.

Music streaming service Spotify has hit a winning streak. Not content with winning awards for its Web-based music-streaming service, it’s also set to take the mobile world by storm, firstly with a Spotify app for Android phones (above, and in the video below) and the iPhone, and now with a dedicated Spotify phone.

Most companies are happy enough with just a smartphone app to add to their Web app, but Spotify figures that it might as well go the whole hog and build an entire phone around its service. And why not? If Twitter and Facebook can do it, then surely the world’s most talked about music streaming service can too?

But a Spotify phone won’t just shake up the mobile phone world – it’ll shake up Starbucks, too. Read on after the jump to see how…

While we wait expectantly for MWC 2009, the annual mobile phone trade fest in Barcelona where the great and the good in the mobile phone world will be showing off their latest handsets, news seems to have shifted to the software part of the mobile world.

There’s a new version of Firefox that’s being developed specifically for mobile phones, and it’s now reaching a stage where it can actually be tested. Currently codenamed Fennec, Firefox Mobile, as it’ll ultimately be called, is rumoured to debut on the HTC Touch Pro.

This is annoying for three reasons. Firstly, because it’s being released on Windows Mobile first, which is possibly the worst mobile operating system on the market today; secondly, because it’s being released only on the HTC Touch Pro, which means it’s either going to be a slow process porting it to every other device on the market, or else it requires some pretty serious processing horsepower to work; and thirdly, because I have neither a Windows Mobile machine, nor a HTC Touch Pro, so I won’t be able to give it a go. Bugger!

Fennec isn’t the only new browser in town though…

Mozilla has announced that an alpha version of its much-touted Firefox Mobile Web browser will be launched in a few weeks’ time.

Coming after the first imminent launch of the first Google Android phone and its mobile version of Google Chrome, together with the iPhone’s Safari browser, Pocket IE, Opera Mobile and Nokia’s use of the WebKit browser, the mobile Web is looking set to positively explode.

Indeed, it seems there are more mobile browsers than desktop-based ones!

This is fantastic news for the mobile Web, which should finally provide an experience similar to the desktop equivalent we’ve all grown used to.

Having used the mobile Web for the past year with my Nokia E90 and loved every minute of it, I think it’s something the vast majority of users will become increasingly accustomed to.

In a surprising move, Nokia have announced that they are working with Microsoft to port Microsoft Silverlight onto the Symbian S60 platform. Silverlight, for those not in the know, is Microsoft’s brand new cross platform web-based multimedia software that enables the delivery of Rich Internet Applications and HD video onto your browser. It’s set to be a fierce competitor with Adobe’s similar AIR technology, which itself is based on Adobe Flash.

Today’s announcement that Silverlight will be available on Nokia and other S60-based phones is a huge boost for the technology, as S60 is used in over 50% of all smartphones – that’s 150 million phones that Silverlight has access to.