The latest data on browser trends from Sitepoint show that more people browse the Web on smartphones than use Internet Explorer 6 and 7 combined. Those two old clunkers have been the bugbears of Web developers for years, requiring sites to degrade as nicely as possible to that least common denominator of browsers. But it's a new world now; 6.95% of Web activity in November 2011 was on mobile browsers, and only 6.49% was on IE 6 or 7.
As Richard MacManus pointed out this week, there are lots of interesting trends in Web browsing lately. Another big story is that Google's Chrome (our consumer product of the year) has eclipsed Mozilla Firefox as the number 2 browser for the first time. But the shift from desktop to mobile is the real trend. The days of developing for the worst desktop browser are drawing to an end, and having the best possible mobile site has become a priority.
Somewhere along the complex supply chain of the mobile world's chips, antennas, touchscreens, operating systems and inter-linked celular networks traveling around the globe - someone has been caught capturing and transmitting more of your data than you'd probably like. There are probably any number of parties doing something similar but mobile usage data capture service Carrier IQ has been found to have code installed, with the phone companies' blessing, on millions of phones without the knowledge of consumers.
We're all awash in a sea of data, we have been for some time, but as we meet that data we learn that it is made of people. We've met the data tsunami and it is us. That's bound to make a lot of people uncomfortable. If a future based on that data unfolds in the wrong way, it could end up a major hindrance to the quality of human life.
MasterCard is continuing its big push to become known as a technology innovator and today it announced a strategic partnership and investment with mFoundry, a software-as-a-service mobile banking solution serving more than 560 banks and credit unions in the United States. MasterCard's announcement comes on the heels of its partnership with Intel and is yet another step in the confluence of the technology and payments industries.
Looking back on 2011, it may be remembered as The Year Of Mobile. Sure, iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and all the other platforms existed in previous years but historians will look back at 2011 and say that it was the year that the way an entire populace interacts with information fundamentally changed. Mobile is not just for the early adopters anymore. Smartphones are everywhere.
What made waves in the mobile realm this year? We take a look in our third installment of ReadWriteWeb's top products of the year. Our founder Richard MacManus kicked us off with social products and Jon Mitchell took a look at web-based consumer products. To make the mobile list, a product had to be built to fundamentally work inside mobile platforms, hence the platforms themselves (iOS, Android flavors etc.) do not make the list. Take a look at our list below and let us know what we may have missed in the comments.
A new study by Compete shows that women are adopting smartphones more quickly than men. In 2011, women outnumbered men in a study of smartphone owners by gender. This goes directly against findings in 2010, at which point there were more male than female smartphone owners. Of the types of activities done on smartphones, female-identified smartphone owners were more interested in sending text messages, accessing social networks, playing games, sharing photos and videos, conducting financial transactions and shopping online than their male counterparts. A greater percentage of men surveyed were more interested in streaming content (movies/TV) and making dinner reservations than female smartphone owners.
Of course, this study falls into the same space that all gender-specific studies from big research firms do. It conflates sex (biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women) and gender (socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women). These definitions of sex and gender are from the World Health Organization.
The media and news industry, after 10 years of disruption and economic torture, finally thought that it had gotten a step ahead. Publishers were in on the ground floor when the tablet revolution started with products ready to go even before Steve Jobs introduced us to the original iPad. The marriage of tablets to publishing would be a boon for everybody.
The honeymoon has not been sweet.
Publishers did not have the tools to create fully functional magazines from the very start. Sure, they were nice looking, but that was about it. Over the last two years, though, publishers and developers have created dynamic tools that allow the news media to create apps that do not just meet user expectations, but go beyond them.
The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) and CTIA, a cellular trade association, announced a rating program for mobile apps that will be instituted by a variety of partners in the near future. Just as video games have ratings from the ESRB, now too will mobile apps.
The app stores for the major U.S. carriers in AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular and Verizon are on board, as is Microsoft. We will see how far the rating system takes off without recognition from the two big gatekeepers, Apple and Google. Do apps really need to be rated or is it another example of the Nanny State making sure that everything is labeled and politically correct?
Research In Motion has taken a step that many in the industry thought the company would not, could not take. RIM announced today that it will release Mobile Fusion, an enterprise-security grade mobile device management suite akin to its BlackBerry Enterprise Server, for the iPhone and Android platforms.
This was a necessary move for RIM. Yet, it has lost the first mover's advantage. The BES system was the first of its kinds and became the default system for enterprise mobility. That era is beginning to pass as more employees bring iPhones and Android to work. RIM will look to monetize off that trend, but the company's edge has been lost.
You're already paying a monthly fee for Internet access at home and an additional fee of equal or greater size for your smartphone's data plan. When all is said and done, you end up paying nearly $2,000 a year to access the Web from two devices, but only one of those connections is mobile and ubiquitous, unless you pay extra to take your home ISP with you on the road.
With these costs, paying an additional $15 to $50 to tether your iPhone to your laptop can seem difficult to stomach. Well, now you may not have to. For whatever reason, Apple has approved an iOS app that lets you do exactly that for a one-time fee of $15.
The mobile platform wars are in full swing. Android and Apple dominate the landscape but a new report from VisionMobile says that there will be no clear winner in the battle for supremacy over the mobile market. Android controls the numbers, Apple controls the profits and everybody else is fighting for scraps and third place in the ecosystem.
Developers are the front line soldiers of the platform wars. "iOS and Android are winning not only by virtue of technological sophistication, but primarily by the strength of their application ecosystems," the VisionMobile report states. The "network effect" drives the ecosystem, more sales equals more developers and more applications which in turn drives more developers. We take a close look at the platform wars through VisionMobile's report below.
