Mobile Browsing is Hugely Popular Says Survey. Gosh, Who Would Have Thought? [Archive]

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Jonathon Watkins

01-31-2006, 02:00 AM

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008744.html' target='_blank'>http://www.russellbeattie.com/noteb...ok/1008744.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Simon Judge just pointed out a new presentation from Nokia about Smartphone usage which is really astounding in some of the light it starts to shed about how people with powerful phones on fast networks actually use their devices. . . . [B]rowsing is the number one (by far) mobile application that uses data, and interestingly, carrier decks only account for 50% of the traffic. That’s great! That means people are actually going outside the gardens and hitting other sites. I think this trend is only going to continue as mobile browsers get better, screens get higher resolution, and network speeds get faster."</i><br /><br /> <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/Mobile Web usage.jpg" /> <br /><br />The original study is now only <a href="http://www.netlab.hut.fi/opetus/s383001/2005/kalvot/6.shtml">available by request,</a> but it does point out a few interesting facts. Personally I was surprised the carriers <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walled_garden_%28media%29">'walled gardens'</a> took as much as 50% of all data and also thought that browsing comprising over 50% of data traffic seemed on the low side. It would be interesting to see the data broken down by speed of connection and price. At a wild guess, the cheaper and faster your connection, the more you tend to download. There's obviously a growing market for mobile friendly sites (being distinct from <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=35543&">mobile specific content,</a> which is <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=28464&">not necessarily a good idea.</a>) Now, if only the mobile data charges were more reasonable... :? Is this you experience or is there something else holding you back from mobile browsing away to your heart's content?

MitchellO

01-31-2006, 05:38 AM

I don't find it surprising that browsing takes up so much of the data pie.

If you think about it, the average webpage is a lot larger than the average email. Even if you visit 10 webpages and receive 50 email, its very likely that the webpages will have taken up considerably more data, even though less of them were viewed.

I know for one that visiting web pages over GPRS sends my data use much higher than just checking my Mobile Gmail page.

Menneisyys

01-31-2006, 06:42 AM

MitchellO

01-31-2006, 07:13 AM

I know for one that visiting web pages over GPRS sends my data use much higher than just checking my Mobile Gmail page.

OT: do you use any compression service (Toonel/Onspeed or even Web-based ones like MobileLeap)? They help really a lot in saving GPRS usage.

When surfing mobile pages like PPCT Mobile, SPT Mobile, Gmail Mobile or The Gadgeteer Mobile I just use PIE, but for larger sites like engadget I use the Opera Mini browser. Speeds up browsing, while making the pages look good and take less download.

bennie

02-01-2006, 02:51 AM

I don't have any price constraints (short version of story, the less people that know the better). But I do have screen size constriants (i-mate sp3) and speed constraints (GPRS).

So I don't use it for real content browsing, more like handy information finding. Like the other day on the way to the beach and remembered that the fish n chip shop there always has huge queues so I found its number on whitepages.co.nz and placed an order in advanve. oh that and Ferry timetables, opening hours, stuff like that.

The pages I visit are never optimised for small screens but if you scroll around enough you can find the information. I read google have a site that lets you browse other sites cut down, so I might try that.

PS, browsing on a miniture screen is just another reason I hate flash .