ReadWriteWeb

Mobile search company Taptu has released a detailed report showing that the future of the Mobile Web is likely to be dominated by cross-platform browser-based mobile web sites - rather than apps built specifically for iPhone, Android, or any other platform. Taptu calls the former "the Mobile Touch Web," which it defines as "Web sites created for mobile touchscreen devices, with finger-friendly layouts and lightweight pages that are fast to load over cellular networks."

Taptu estimates that there are 326,000 Mobile Touch Web sites worldwide, which they say compares to 148,000 iPhone apps in the App Store and 24,000 apps in the Android market. Taptu expects the browser-based mobile web market to grow much faster than the app market.

Smartphone users are becoming increasingly comfortable with using their phones to shop online. According to new data from Compete, about 37% of smartphone users have purchased something with their handset in the last six months. Among the most popular items that these users bought were music, books, DVDs, video games and movie tickets. At the same time, though, Compete also found that smartphone users are very likely to abandon shopping sites that haven't been optimized for mobile usage. Almost 8% of smartphone owners who tried to buy something from their phone were simply unable to do so.

Yesterday, Wolfram Research shut down the iPhone-optimized version of Wolfram Alpha, the company's "computational knowledge engine." Many pundits speculated that Wolfram decided to shutter the mobile site in order to drive more users to the company's $50 iPhone app. Earlier this morning, we got a chance to talk to Schoeller Porter, Wolfram's product manager for the iPhone app. According to Schoeller, the reason for killing the mobile site was simple: not enough people were using it.