A Blog From Behind the Trenches

TechCrunch reports that AdMob claims that the iPhone makes up 50% of US mobile Web traffic on smartphones. There is just a small problem here, and that is that the data is only based on AdMob's mobile ad network, which favours the iPhone, according to the Business Insider:

AdMob's stats significantly favor the iPhone because of its vast ad inventory in iPhone apps -- ads that are not available on other phones -- and on iPhone-tailored Web sites, which won't work on some phones

So it looks like AdMob's data is anything but representative of anything but, well, AdMob's own iPhone-favouring ad network. Many of the comments at TechCrunch seem to have caught this small and yet significant detail.

Opera's State of the Mobile Web report obviously only covers Opera Mini users, but gives actual insights into what kind of sites people visit with their phones. It also keeps reports the handsets used to run the application.

Opera Mini can be installed on both feature phones and smartphones.

Even though I am primarily involved in Opera Desktop, I am very happy to see the success the Opera Mini team is having with their new baby. It's certainly raising a few eyebrows out there, and overall, people seem to love it.

This launch has not been without controversies, though. Our little Apple spoof ad has ruffled a few feathers out there.

One thing they are getting caught up in is that the spoof ad is comparing software (Opera Mini) to hardware (iPhone), but I don't think they are getting the point. Opera Mini is available right now, and can be used on almost any phone. You don't need a $600 device to browse the full Web on your mobile phone.

I'll quote Mobility Now:

This is a revolutionary product. It’s bigger than the iPhone. Why? Because over one billion people currently use a cellphone, and are restricted to browse only WAP pages because they don’t have a smartphone. Yet the vast majority support Java, and by downloading this simple 200k program, they can now browse the full Internet with a desktop like experience, right now, for free.

Another issue I've seen brought up a few times is that the overview mode and zooming in Opera Mini 4 is a ripoff of the iPhone browser. To be fair, I won't get into how Apple claimed to do full mobile browsing first. Let's instead look at the assumption that Apple invented zooming and panning in Web browsers...

While a lot of people may not be aware that Nokia has been doing this for quite some time with their new mobile browser, it is slightly more surprising that they are unaware that the Wii browser (Opera!) also gives you an overview mode where you can choose to zoom in on specific parts of the page. The DS browser also does similar things, and even Microsoft's experimental, er, "Web site image viewer" Deepfish starts zoomed out, and allows you to zoom in to view interesting content in more detail.

I am sure that iPhone will be a wonderful device, but it will also be "wonderfully" expensive, and out of reach to a lot of people. And while Apple is bragging about zooming and panning in their mobile browser, the rest of us can simply use one of the many browsers on various devices that do this already. And if you have a Java enabled phone, you would most likely be able to install Opera Mini, which means that you won't have to buy a new phone to get the full Web in your pocket, right now.