Skyfire vs Opera Mini
Wednesday, 30. January 2008, 15:28:58
Skyfire presented their take on the mobile web the other day, with an Opera Mini-lookalike. Unlike Opera Mini, however, it seems to be more of a "peep-hole" browser, not unlike Microsoft’s Deepfish. If it really is, and since it says it can stream Flash animations to the mobile phone client, I think they should research what European mobile phone owners pay for data transfers before trying to push this on the world. At 20 NOK (3.60 USD) per megabyte, streaming is not a word you want to hear in conjunction with mobile phones…
WIDGETIZE
Simon Houston # 31. January 2008, 21:50
"The Skyfire private beta will initially support Windows Mobile phones in the U.S. In the coming months, we will introduce a version for Symbian phones. Other phone platforms and geographies are on the roadmap too. This is just the beginning."
Can't opera mobile pretty much do this already?. I had thoughts that it was going to be a java app, but i don't think that technology was possible anyway...
A relief to know that opera mini will still hold most of the market in the lower end mobiles corner
Ankur # 1. February 2008, 00:36
Simon Houston # 1. February 2008, 02:26
Originally posted by skyfire:
Kinda implies its not ready yet.
Lars Kleinschmidt # 1. February 2008, 14:23
Ankur # 2. February 2008, 01:39
Data transfer rates may come down, I remember how horribly costly internet access used to be even late into 90s and early 00s. Which is why we did not have youtube back then, but if a browser has the ability to show flash video it definitely moves into the sexy category. It may only have novelty value right now but people might download it and use it just because of that. In future when data transfer rates go down Skyfire may be ahead of Opera!
The point is it is easy to brush of your competition; Opera faces that from several people. I do not expect Opera doing the same to startups. I have my doubts about skyfire too btw.
Peter Krefting # 4. February 2008, 07:42
First of all: I’m not an Opera employee anymore. Second of all: I’m just calling what I see. As long as GPRS data transfer costs are insane (which they often are), anything that is streaming data to mobile phones will suck. Horribly. Having said that, there are some flat rate-ish offerings here in Norway as well, but they are either horribly expensive, capped or limited to certain times of day. That is why Opera Mini’s approach of transferring only a compressed representation of a web page is superiour on this market.
Plus, I live very well without Java and Flash in my regular browser (neither work very well on my 64-bit Linux system), so I don’t feel like I’m missing anything on my mobile…
Ankur # 10. February 2008, 21:38
Haavard # 12. February 2008, 14:39
Peter Krefting # 12. February 2008, 20:21