In its new study “The Mobile Browser Market,” ABI Research predicts that mobile browsers which can handle advanced client-side coding (JavaScript) will keep growing over the next five years, as the open-Internet browser (OIB) segment for mobile grows from 76 million in 2007 to nearly 700 million browsers delivered in 2013.
Still, ABI argues it’s important to note that despite the best efforts, web usage on mobile devices has a significant distance to go in closing the gap with PC-based browsers.
The absence of important plug-ins such as Flash on many handsets and the constraints of many phones compared to the PC mean that even OIB browser vendors such as Skyfire continue to see a need for server-assisted architectures for transcoding and web acceleration.
According to research director Michael Wolf, “The move towards web-based applications means browser and web services engines will become increasingly important for mobile, whether these are in a commercial browser implementation or a customized widget. Ultimately, the long-term trend away from native applications to web-based applications means browser and web services engines will be increasingly important components in the mobile environment.”
More information is available on ABI Research’s website.