Qualcomm, Opera deal could dramatically boost mobile web audience

February 15, 2011

Qualcomm, Opera deal could dramatically boost mobile web audience

Mobile web browsing on feature phones soon may become much easier and more fun, thanks to a just-announced deal that will make Opera Mini the default web browser on new handsets using Qualcomm’s popular BREW MP feature phone platform.

This could be a key breakthrough for news publishers’ mobile strategy…

To give an idea of the scale and speed of this deal, AT&T plans for all of its feature phones to eventually run on Brew MP. These new phones could start appearing in stores in as little as four months.

Feature phones still comprise nearly three-fourths of the US mobile market—and over 90% of feature phones come with a web browser. However, the clunky, limited, slow browsers packaged on most feature phones have been dampening web use in this market segment.

Since feature phones cost much less than smartphones to buy (and for typical monthly bills), and since feature phones are widely available on no-contract plans, they’re likely to remain popular among cost-conscious consumers for several years yet.

More people are accessing more content of all kinds on their mobile devices—but most of this is happening through mobile web browsers, not apps.

A new report from ComScore notes that “Even though applications received much more attention by the media throughout 2010, our analysis in the U.S. ...showed that by a small margin, application usage is still second to browser usage when it comes to the mobile web. For example 36 percent of mobile using Americans ...browsed the mobile web in December 2010, while application access reached 34 percent of Americans.”

It’s generally far easier and cheaper to develop offerings for the mobile web than to build native smartphone apps, with the added benefit that mobile web offerings have a much larger potential audience. The Qualcomm-Opera deal indicates that more than ever, the mobile web might be the best first place for news orgs to focus their initial mobile strategy. Apps are cool—but in a business and market sense, they’re cul-de-sacs.

By Amy Gahran, 02/15/11 at 3:32 pm
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Tags: mobile, business models, business, strategy, web