This shouldn’t be much of a surprise, but ABI Research is saying that more than 60% of mobile phones will have a web browser.
Of course, not all web browsers are created equal and the company expects the high-end version like those found on the Apple iPhone, Google Android and even Research In Motion’s new Webkit browser to continue to improve and bring rich-media content to handsets.
“Parallel to this development, a new family of browsers has emerged: the proxy-based (or client-server or compression) browser, which is epitomized by the Opera Mini,” ABI said in a prepared statement. “These browsers move some caching and processing off the phone to a nearby server, allowing the browser to run on lower-cost processors and requiring as little as 4 Mb of memory. That means these browsers can be used on even the lowest-cost phones.”
The high-end stuff will always be excited but the battle among the proxy-based mobile web browsers is going to be fascinating to watch. Opera is the clear winner in this field and I don’t see it losing momentum any time soon but there are a host of notable challengers.
In particular, I think that Skyfire has a chance to displace Opera on a ton of feature phones as the default mobile web browser. The mobile web browser also uses a proxy system to deliver richer Internet content to handsets while minimizing bandwidth and I generally like its interface better than Opera.
Still, this will be the side battle, as ABI expects full Internet browsers like those on the Apple iPhone or Google Android phones to exceed that of proxy-based mobile web browsers by 2012.
We’ll be watching this space to see if ABI’s prognostications come true but, in the meantime, I want to know what your favorite mobile web browser is. Let us know in the comments, friends.
[Via ABI Research]