From laptops and tablets to smart phones, the Web is going increasingly mobile. While not everyone can afford one of these devices, the Web is even creeping onto other, low-cost devices like feature phones and these are becoming increasingly Web-enabled. According to research firm ABI Research, this is a trend that will only continue, with more than 60% of handsets having mobile Web browsers by 2015.
According to the report, a 60% penetration rate of handsets with mobile Web browsers will double today’s rate and bring the total number of Web-enabled phones to 3.8 billion. The phones will have one of two types of browser – a full Internet browser or a proxy-based browser.
Full Internet browsers will be on all smartphones and a “growing number of enhanced (or feature) phones,” says Senior Analyst Mark Beccue in the release. The other type of browser – the proxy-based browser – requires very little memory and processing power and “can be used on even the lowest-cost phones.” The most well-known example of a proxy-based browser is Opera Mini, which downloads highly-compressed versions of Web pages from a proxy server to increase speed and performance.
While the release states that “the installed base of full Internet browsers will exceed that of proxy-based browsers sometime in 2012,” the continued explosion of the mobile Web is good news for companies like Opera. The browser company reported last week that the mobile Web ub Africa was continuing to see triple-digit growth and much of it was based on low cost phones.
